Happy end of 2021

Happy New Years!!!

So, I wanted to give you all quick updates for the year.

I got Illeria to a point that I'm calling it "finished."  There was a quote I heard George Lucas say once (I can't remember if he was quoting someone) about how movies are never finished, just abandoned; I think that totally applies here.  I could probably keep going on forever, but at some point it is time to say "Done!" and leave any further changes for the second edition.

The final game has 43 abilities (among 6 classes), 11 spells (among 3 schools), 10 types of additional creatures, 9 missions, and 5 scenarios to determine how characters become linked.  The rulebook is 5 chapters and 55 pages, and contains 14 drawings and 13 figures.

This feels like something to celebrate.

I order a copy printed from Lulu, and I'm super excited to see it.  I think it should get here Tuesday.

I pitched the game to Osprey and Mantic Games, both have said no.  I'm going to try Warlord Games, but if that doesn't work, I might just send it to Wargame Vault.  

Anyways, cheers!

Finalizing the campaign mode

My update, I have 5 playtests to go.  I have an ordered list of abilities I want to test (I won't get to all of them, but that's okay).  I'm happy with my missions, and might try to squeeze one more in.  The rulebook just went through a major edit, and Sarah is going to look at it.  And, I have a campaign mode I'm happy with.

On that, the campaign mode...

I've always had a few goals in my campaign:

1) Battlefield deaths feel heavy (e.g. if a party is losing, they don't keep fighting to earn extra experience)

2) Games are varied (e.g. if I play four games against my brother, they feel distinct, rather than like one game with three rematches)

3) There is an end condition.

For (3), I've decided to stay with the Illeria as a former prison colony backstory.  I've gone through different ideas, and what I finally came to was that the characters know of a way to escape (e.g. crafting a magic flying boat or building a teleporter), but doing so is resource-intensive.  So, they battle over alchemical resources to craft their items from, and escape when they collect enough.

For (2), a given game has 5 characters, but groups 12 that they can pick from.  Because of this, you will field a different party every game.

For (1), if a character dies in battle, there is a decent chance they die permanently.  This links with the 12 characters thing, because it builds in a buffer: if a character dies, you still have 11 left.

So, then comes the nitty-gritty of how to do a campaign.  To test my ideas, I created a campaign simulator.  I made a party of 12 characters, and named them after PS1-era Final Fantasy characters (I figured I'd care more if I saw "Tifa dies" instead of "Character 3 dies").  Then, I made a simulation that did everything except the game:

1) I picked 5 characters to fight.

2) The simulator randomly determined if I won (50/50 chance), and picked who died in battle (based on death rates in playtests).

3) It determined whether a character that died in battle if they died permanently, gained permanent injuries, or was fine.

4) It randomly assigned me whatever spoils I got from the battle.

5) It gave me the choice of how to assign experience points, and if someone levels up, gives them pre-made abilities.

6) It determines how many resources I consumed, and if needed, what would happen with foraging.

7) It determined if the party persisted; if so, repeat.  

I ran this for a number of campaigns, and then decided how I liked the results.  I would then tweak how steps #3-7 worked.  I made a few interested discoveries.

I wanted parties to consume some kind of resource (step 6), to put a timer on things.  This was meant to be like the ante in poker: a reason to not sit out most games.  I tried versions where I tracked this on a broad and a minute level, and I found that I liked using the broadest level possible.  What I came up with was that 1 unit of "rations" feeds the entire party after a game.  If you win a game you get a perishable ration, if you lose you need to eat one of your dry rations.  If you run out of dry resources, then you need to forage, and foraging often results in misfortune.  I like this because it is simple, and it puts a clock on the number of games that you can lose.  

Spoils (step 4) took a good bit of adjusting.  I elected to have the win condition be collect X alchemical resources, and so I needed to tweak what X was, and how many you could get in a game.  For a while, it was 1 if you won, and 0 if you lost. I eventually decided to make it 2 if you won, 1 if you had a minor loss, and 0 if you had a major loss.  I did this to keep people in battle, so that even if they knew they would lose, they would still fight for that one bit of resource.  It also felt better to get 1, and much more interesting if the number of resources was not just the number of wins.  I also tweaked how many rewards parties got (besides the resources).  After a few tests, I settled on the winning party got 2, and the losing party got 1.  For the winner, 3 was too many and 1 was not enough.  For the loser, it really felt bad get nothing.

I haven't changed my leveling-up system (step 5), and I've always really liked it.  Basically, after each game you get a certain number of training dice, which you assign amongst your characters, and if you roll high enough, they gain a level.

Death took some tweaking, to get it moderately punishing.  I ended on characters die on a dice roll of 4+, or 5+ if they are level 3, or 6 if they are level 5.  Each time they die in battle but not permanently, it usually increases their chance of dying permanently.  I debated whether to have the chance of dying always increase, or just usually (i.e. on the roll of a 1, nothing happens).  Usually felt so much better psychologically, however, it had little impact on the long-term probability of survival (i.e. how many times a level 1, 3, or 5 character could die in battle before dying permanently); so, I kept it.

Okay, almost 1000 words.  Almost there.  This is exciting!!!

10 playtests to go...

This will be an all-update day.

As I mentioned in my last post, maybe a month ago I set a deadline for myself: I would play 20 more test games, and then call Illeria done (at least for now).  I recently played game #10, so it's time to check in and see how it is going.

I'm trying to keep in mind a great GDC talk I saw by Tom Francis on efficiency in game design.  I recently rewatched it.  One of his main pieces of advice was to consider things it add in terms of value divided by work.  

So, here is what I have done and need to do, divided into groups.

Main rules
I feel really good about the main rule set.  I've made few changes in the past 10 games, and feel good about those I have (e.g. making spells harder to cast if the target is in cover).  I've also been tightening things by removing rules or making things consistent.  I doubt I will have many more changes in the next 10 games.

Characters
I've finally started testing with high-level characters.  I think it has gone well, as a character with a two-point ability or a couple of ability boosts is good, but not overwhelmingly good.  
I currently have 5 fighter abilities (mostly well tested), 7 archer abilities (all but one well tested), 12 mystic abilities (not all of them tested), 6 spellcaster abilities (some well tested, others less so), 4 animator abilities (all well tested) + 2 I'm debating, and 5 summoner abilities (most well tested).  I think at this point I can stop testing archery abilities, and I either need to start culling mystic abilities or testing them thoroughly.  I keep feeling like I need one more animator ability, but have been struggling.  

Missions & scenarios
I've divided my game types into "missions" (which define how one wins), and "scenarios" (which define how magic is transferred to the real world).  I currently have 9 missions that have been tested decently to well, and a few I'm so-so on.  I'm debating between whether it is worth spending my last 10 games tightening up current missions, or developing new ones.  I think it would be irresponsible to try to develop more than one new mission (two at most).  I have three very solid scenarios, and two that are so-so.  I'm definitely going to test the two so-so scenarios, that will be a main focus.  The scenarios have honestly been lacking in part because they are harder to design.  I'd like to have a 6th one, but might not come up with an idea. 

Campaign
I have a decent campaign mode at this point.  I think I have a decent method for having strong parties fight weak ones.  I think I really like my death and experience systems, though I wonder if they could use minor tweaking.  I've tracked the number of survivors per game in the past 7 games, and have found that on average 40% of a party dies if the party wins, and 60% dies if the lose (that said, these are both +/- about 18%, so I can't be super confident yet); I can use this to project how long a party will survive.  One thing I've struggled with slightly is the resource system (more in a future post).  I've been thinking testing with this in simulated campaigns, where I do the pre-game stuff, then flip a coin to see who wins, and calculate the aftermath.  I'll do computer simulations understand long-term behavior, but also do it by hand to see how crappy I feel after a bad game.  

The campaign is one where I debate the value/effort.  If I look in that term, I'm not sure if it is worth it, but it is something I really fundamentally wanted from when I first created this game.  I guess that is like what Tom said, that it is important because it is the value I want to put into this game.

Rulebook
I just gave the rulebook an on-paper edit.  It is still rough, but other than the missions and scenarios, I have everything on paper.  My time as a scientist taught me it's often easier to edit than write from scratch, and I have a good basic structure.  Sarah promised that she'll read it when I'm near done.

I have several diagrams, which I'm happy with, and many hand-made pictures.  I have a few more diagrams I want to make, and a couple more drawings I want to hand-draw. 

Backstory
This is one I keep going back and forth on.  I'm starting to lean towards the story of mercenary prospectors in a magical outlands, rather than a story of escapees fighting to survive on a prison island.   The outlands story works better with the campaign mode, and honestly makes more sense with some of the missions.  I'm debating if it is an interesting story, or one that is over-done (I worry it sounds too much like Frostrgave and Mordheim).  I think the prison island story is much more unique.  I also have to take into account that I have flavor text written for the prison island story, and I worry that would take too much time to re-do (failing the value/effort ratio).

Ok, so the current to-do list (in rough order of importance):
-Make rulebook clear.
-Make rulebook pretty.
-Polish abilities I am so-so on.
-Add an animator ability.
-Get campaign mode working.
-Polish scenarios I am so-so on.
-Polish missions I am so-so on.
-Get at least 1 more scenario.
-Make at least 1 more mission.

Ok, T minus 10 games and counting...

I'm back, and a SUPER exciting topic

I took a hiatus from Illeria after starting my new job.  I needed it.  I'm back though.  I set a deadline to playtest Illeria 20 more times, and then contact my first publisher (Osprey).  I'm at 9.  I told myself I'd do a check-in at 10, so that will be my next post.

For today, I wanted to talk about grammar in rulebooks.  I know, why did I take so long to talk about something so exciting?  :p  

Seriously though, as I was writing my rulebook, I noticed I was being inconsistent about what I capitalized.  For example, do I write, "If a Spellcaster is Linked, they gain +2 Soul when casting Berserk," or "If a spellcaster is linked, they gain +2 soul when casting berserk"?  Previously I had been just doing what felt right, without putting much thought into it (this in a book that I've edited and rewritten for the past decade).  My recent full edit made me think I should be more intentional in my choices.  

I talked to Sarah (a former English teacher) for advice.  She said that game rulebooks are such a niche that there probably aren't standard conventions, and to just be consistent.  She also suggested looking at other games, and seeing if I found a pattern.

So, I did this, and here's what I found (some of these in old-edition rulebooks):

Dungeons & Dragons capitalizes stats (Wisdom), skills, table names, abilities, and various quantities that they abbreviate (Armor Class as AC).  They use lower case for race (dwarf), class (barbarian), and condition (paralyzed).  They italicize spell names.

Warhammer 40K and Necromunda capitalize stats (Leadership), races (Ork), titles (Champion), terms like Combat Score or Break Test, psychic power names, skills, and mission names.  They also capitalize weapon names when they are in a table, but not in text.  The use lower case for statuses, phases of the turn (shooting phase), and the terms short and longe range.

Infinity capitalizes stats, attributes of weapons, troop types, skill names, statuses, mission names, and attributes like Short Skill or Range.  I couldn't find anything significant that was lower-case.

Frostrgave capitalizes stats, class (Elementalist), magic schools, spell names, and the words "Line of Sight" and "Wizard Sheet."  They use lower case on creature names and mercenary classes.  

Savage Worlds capitalizes stats, skills, action names, status, and the term "Unit Card."  It uses lower-case for the term "cover".  

King of War capitalizes stats, move types, missions, statuses, troop type, movement types, and the terms Line of Sight and Enemies.  I couldn't find anything significant in lower-case.  

Going through this made me feel better about how indecisive I've been, it seems a little all over the map, and some games seem to just capitalize everything.  

I found one discussion of it on BGG, which seemed to suggest that there is no standard convention, that "only capitalize proper nouns" is a good rule of thumb.  I also like the idea of using italics for highlighting certain things.

Here is my working idea.  I will capitalize:

-Stats (Armor)

-Terms like Energy Points, Residual Magic, and Training Dice

-Mission names (Scoria Hunt)

-Phase names (Action Phase)

-Action names (Melee Attack action)

I will italicize:

-spell names

-ability names

I will use lower-case for:

-statuses (linked)

-terms like summoned creatures and damage

-class names (mystic)

-terrain types (heavy cover)

-names of creatures (eidolons)

I'll see how this looks, and edit it as needed.

Quick update

 Hi all, I haven't posted in a while.  Between a lot of life stuff (starting a new job at Carvana, trying to buy a house) and a feeling of burnout with Illeria, I haven't worked on it for a while.  So, I decided I needed a break.  I pushed my goal of finishing it back to the end of June, and decided that I'd spend May not working on it (except for painting figures for it, and maybe making terrain).  I'll tell you more about it when I get back.

Simplicity vs. interesting(?) decision in turn order

Weekly updates:
I keep playing games and coming up with abilities.  I want to have 5 abilities per character type (i.e. melee, archery, spellcaster, etc), and I'm almost there.  

For today, I want to talk about the initiative system.

Illeria has an I-go-you-go system, where each round, players take turns acting with one character at a time (until all characters have acted).  To determine who goes first in a round, I have had players roll a dice, and whoever rolls highest gets to pick whether go first or second.  If there are ties, then you reroll until someone wins.

I had a funny moment when I was playtesting by myself.  For a long time, I did this faithfully, rolling two dice, picking the highest, and then deciding when the team that won would want to go.  However, at one point I realized that because this is a zero-sum game, and I had all the information, I there wound never be a situation where one player wanted to go first and the other second.  So, since it came down to an even split to decide, I made it easier on myself, and rolled one dice, with each side having a 50% chance of going first.  This meant I didn't need to think, and that I never had to reroll ties, and gave the same outcome.

This got me thinking, should I bother making whether to go first or second a choice at all?  The main pro is that the player who rolls higher gets to make an interesting decision.  It is also more what players expect.  The main con is that it is one more step in the game.

Thinking about it, if you just flipped a coin each round to determine turn order, that would take 10-ish seconds.  If both players roll a dice, that also takes 10-ish seconds.  However, there is also a 1 in 6 chance that they need to reroll the dice (making it 20 seconds), a 1 in 36 chance they need to reroll at least twice (30 seconds) and so on.  This should take an average of 12 seconds (see here).  Plus, there is the time a player needs to think (another 5-10 seconds), and the more squishy impact of cognitive load, perhaps on something other than what the game should be about.  Is this decision worth doubling the amount of time it takes?

I was leaning towards "no", that I should just make it random, but then had another realization, which is that I don't need to make the odds 50-50.  When I initially designed Illeria, parties had a leader, and if the leader died, their party suffered a penalty to dice rolls.  I don't know if I want to bring the leader back, but I have had some other ideas of how to tinker with the roll.

First, players could get +1 to their roll for each character who is knocked out.  I'm really liking this, because it would produce negative feedback.  Wargames are notorious for having positive feedback loops: you win by killing characters, and killing your opponent's characters makes your opponent less able to kill your characters.  I've often struggled with this, and it might be a way to do it.  

Second, each player could spend Energy Points to boost their roll.  This would add an interesting decision.  Additionally, near the end of the game, parties sometimes get to a point where they gain Energy Points faster than they can spend them.  This could potentially remove that, by giving an infinite pit that you could throw points down.

I really like #1, and am on the fence about #2.  They will slow things down, especially #2, though I also have ideas for eliminating ties (the player who lost last time wins ties).  I think I really need to just playtest this with others.  But, if these extra rules feel like one extra rule, I think I'll just go full simple and make it a 50-50 chance that each player goes first (no decision required).

Summoned creatures

Weekly updates:

I played a couple more games.  I'm finding that doing a campaign mode by itself isn't quite a good idea yet, and that I'd rather just test lots of individual abilities (perhaps more on that later).  I have printed out a list of all of the abilities and missions, and it is really telling to be able to visually see how many abilities I've okayed in each group.  I had the idea that many games will include "major victory" and "minor victory" conditions.  

I also had a conversation with my brother Nick yesterday, which has given me second (third? fourth?) thoughts about the story.  Perhaps more of that later.

Ok, for today, summoned creatures.

In Illeria, one possible ability is for the character to summon creatures.  The role I wanted this to fill is for player who'd rather have a swarm of weaklings, rather than a few powerful characters.  I also wanted summoned creatures to feel wild, so that they are a high-risk-high-reward strategy.  Like, if you are not constantly controlling them, they could turn on your or go berserk.

I have tried to implement the "wild" feeling a number of ways.  Typically, there was a small chance that the creatures went out of control each turn, and if they did, you needed to spend actions trying to regain control.  However, maybe a year ago I invented a novel system that I've loved.  When the creatures are summoned, they begin with 5 control points.  Every turn, you roll one dice for each control point, and each roll that is below a certain value means losing one control point.  For example, the turn you summon the creatures, you'd roll 5 dice, and every 1 or 2 means a lost control point.  The target number can change, based on things in the game.  Once the creatures have 0 control points, they go berserk, and will never recover.  

I liked this new system because each turn becomes a question of how much risk you are willing to take.  For example, if your three creatures have 4 control points, do you risk not trying to control them (and therefore needing a 4+ to keep control points), or do you skip your turn to control them (and need just a 2+)?  I also like that feeling of deciding to take a risk, only to have it implode on you.

The hard part, however, has been tweaking this system.  There are actually a ton of details that I feel like I need to get right.

First, when I initially made this, characters could not reroll the dice to see if they lose control point.  One play tester said this was unintuitive, since there is a way that characters can reroll most other dice rolls.  But, I tried making rerolls possible, and it felt like it lost something.  It went from, "Well, I think I can take a small risk... (rolls dice)... &@%#!!!" to "Well, I think I can take a small risk... (rolls dice)... Oh well, I guess I need to reroll that."  So, I'm making rerolls impossible.  

Second, initially creatures could act on the turn they were summoned.  This created a problem where a character could get close to their enemy, and then have a massive attack which the opponent couldn't respond to.  I changed this so that the summoned creatures don't act their first turn.  This gave the enemy time to respond, and also increased the push-your-luck system (i.e. Do you summon them early, and have them go crazy sooner, or wait, and potentially not have them when you need them?).

Last, I've needed to play around with modifiers to the dice roll.  As a baseline, you can keep each dice on the d6 roll of a 4+.  There are several modifiers, however.  For example, characters can give up their action to improve this, and I've played around with whether this should grant +1 or +2.  This is something I'm still tweaking.  

Sarah keeps teasing me that I should get rid of summoned creatures, in part because I need to keep tweaking their rules, and in part because summoned creatures are at the heart of many problems I've had.  But, I like them too much though, and I feel like I'm almost there.  I don't know, if I'm still struggling, maybe I drop them, but I think I can keep them.

Campaign mode

Hi all.  It has been more than a week.  Some personal things happened a couple weeks ago that took my focus away from the game.  I don't mind talking about it, but don't want to put it on the internet.  But, I'm back, so...

Weekly(?) Updates:

I've made new backgrounds and figures for my rulebook.  As a preview:

I'm hoping that this looks stylistic, rather than cheap.

I currently have 12 abilities that I feel are balanced, two still undergoing testing, and seven written that I need to start testing.  I've started testing multi-ability parties (previously, everyone would have the same ability); this is handy, because I can now test support characters.

I still need to do the following:

-More abilities

-Test characters with multiple abilities

-Test the campaign mode

-Write flavor text for the book

-Edit the book for clarity, formatting, etc.

I'm nervous about making my May 31st deadline.  I can do the first three by making a campaign mode and testing it.  This will involve giving characters multiple abilities and playing with lots of different abilities.  I did this a previous ruleset (one I've replaced with a better one), and it worked well.

On that note, today I thought I'd talk about my campaign mode.

The campaign mode's story is that each player controls a group of mercenary-prospectors, who search Illeria for materials used to create magic back home (e.g. fool's copper, phlogiston, energized scoria, etc).  They are under a strict contract, and cannot return until they have gathered enough materials.  Battles involve fighting other mercenary-prospector groups for materials.  I'll put notes in that players are free to make up more story-based campaign modes too.

I'm planning on starting with the campaign mode I used for the previous ruleset.  Each party begins with something like 15 characters.  Most battles have like four to six characters, so only a subset of the party will fight in each battle.  Before each game, players randomly determine the spoils of battle; these can be magic materials, or things that make the party stronger.  Then, the battle happens.  If a character's real-world doppleganger is incapacitated, then after the game you roll on a table to determine their injury.  Parties then gain a certain amount of materials from scavenging.  Then, surviving characters level up.  Finally, there are phantom attacks.  A party "wins" the campaign if they can gather enough materials to fulfill their contract, and they lose if too many members die off first (thus there can be multiple winners).  My goal is that most parties don't win, so it is an accomplishment they do.  

My goal is for the injury table to be fairly deadly.  Previously, character's had a 33% chance of fully recovering, a 33% chance of dying, and a 33% chance of being weakened (which made them more likely to die in later battles).  For comparison, in Necromunda (and most GW games), characters had about a 33% chance of recovering fully, a 16% chance of being better off, a 16% chance of dying, a 33% chance of being weakened.  In Frostrgave, soldiers had a 50% chance of dying and 50% chance of full recovery, and wizards had a 60% chance of full recovery, a 10% chance of dying, a 20% chance of being temporarily weakened, and a 10% chance of being permanently weakened.  It always bothered me how likely characters were to survive in these games, it made battles feel consequence-free.  Like, in Game of Thrones, if a character fell in battle, they almost always died; if 85% of the time they survived to fight another day, the show would have lost something.  The effect that this has, however, is that you expect your party to dwindle over time (making it different from Frostgrave or Necromunda).  

I had a neat leveling system.  Parties gain "training dice" from every battle just for fighting, and can gain more as spoils or from scavenging.  You assign those dice to your characters after the fight.  You then roll the training dice for each character, and if any dice is higher than their current level, they gain one level.  This ends up being less bookkeeping than most other games (e.g. in Necromunda or Frostgrave, you need to keep track of every kill, every spell cast, etc).  It also allows you some control over how your party levels, but also introduces some randomness.  However, it requires that characters can obtain up to 6 levels, and I don't know if this will change.  

I'm not sure if I want to keep the phantom attacks element.  Previously, the story went that there were phantoms that roamed Illeria, which could be warded off using powdered crystals.  Each party started the campaign with a certain number of crystals, and could find more.  After each battle, they spent crystals to ward off the phantoms.  If they didn't spend enough, then some characters might be attacked (and could be injured or die).  This was meant to give characters a reason to fight, as I feared that otherwise players would retreat too fast: a player that retreated before anyone died would have no consequences for losing a battle.  With phantom attacks, a character that retreated too many times would start losing characters post-battle, so they'd need to balance in-game vs. post-game losses.  I liked the system, but I'm not sure if it fits the theme.  I'm debating replacing it with something to represent water and other resources (which will be scarce, now that I've made Illeria a desert).  

So, to testing!  Hopefully there won't be too many diversions this time.

Whether or not to limit player choice in party design

Weekly updates:
This week I played a game with an old friend Devin.  His feedback was really positive, and he seemed to get the rules quickly.  He especially liked the new animated creatures (which I put back in).  I don't know whether this result is good or bad at this point, since I'm not sure if I should be improving Illeria or verifying it works.  Maybe it just is.  

I've also worked on summoned creatures.  In my game last week, Nick thought they were too powerful, because they could pop out and kill an enemy out of the blue.  His suggested weakening the creatures.  I have been toying with solutions, and I think I'll make it that the creatures can't act when first summoned.  That way, they can remain strong, but enemies have a turn to respond.

For this week, I wanted to discuss whether and how to limit choices in creating a party.  In Illeria, you'll field a party of 5-ish characters.  I've debated whether players should be allowed to choose any characters, or if there should be limits.  This post is inspired by a great roundtable at Guerrilla Miniatures Gaming.  This is the third roundtables they've done, and they've all been pretty inspiring.  

When I started playing Warhammer 40K, you could spend at most 50% of your points on vehicles, and needed to spend at least 25% of your points on infantry.  In later editions, an army needed two to six units of troops, zero to three units of elites, etc. I found this obnoxious.  I understood why you'd want to prevent players from bringing just tanks, but I wished this could come about more organically; like, that an army would fare poorly without a few units of infantry.  

There are games that have done organic limits well, such as Magic the Gathering.  There are no rules preventing you from playing a five-color deck, its just that such a deck would be terrible.  The way Magic accomplishes this is that you need land cards to generate mana, and different spells require different kinds of mana.  So, if you are playing a one-color deck, every land generates the mana you need; if you are playing a five-color deck, you often find yourself having the wrong kinds of mana.  The other way I have seen organic limits involves synergies.  For example, in Slay the Spire, the benefit of every card depends on the deck.  For example, a card that triples an enemy's poison is amazing in a deck of poison cards, and useless in a deck without poison cards.  

40K also had another limit: each player could only take units from one army.  This made sense both thematically and from a gameplay perspective.  Thematically, each species was fighting for survival against other species; thus, it wouldn't make sense to have Orks fighting alongside Eldar.  From a gameplay perspective, choosing one meant accepting the army's pros and cons.  For example, the Imperial Guard had lots of tanks and guns, but the few psychers (space wizards) or melee units; if they could bring a couple Eldar psycher and units of Chaos berserkers, they'd be the best at everything, and this would rob the game of something.

So how to these apply to Illeria?  Should there be parties of summoners and parties of spellcasters, or should parties be able to have one of everything?

-Thematically, it is not clear why spellcasters and summoners wouldn't work together.  Every character is a mercenary in a party that is prospecting Illeria.  If anything, a party would want to have different kinds of characters to deal with different situations (the same way you'd never have a D&D party of all wizards).  
-At times I've played around with limited and varied resources.  In earlier editions I put limits on the number of characters that could act each turn (so that some characters would get skipped every turn).  I had rules that allowed you to activate extra characters if they were similar, e.g. multiple characters could make an archery attack with one action.  However, I eventually decided that I wanted every character to be able to act each turn, which eliminated this resource.  
-I have played around with synergies.  For example, the ability Aura of Magic that gave allies bonuses to spellcasting.  There are two problems with this, however.  First, while some synergies will arise naturally, most require a character to have an ability that boosts other characters (e.g. Aura of Magic gives allies a bonus; an ability that gave the character with the ability a boost wouldn't affect the other characters in the party).  I wanted most abilities to affect individuals, rather than be ``All characters in the party gain X."  Second, if I make synergies really powerful, then I feared battles will be won by the party that comes to the game with the best synergies, rather than by the person who plays the best (which, as I've said previously, I'm trying to avoid).
-I've never been a fan of arbitrary rules about who a player can bring, so I want to avoid that.

That said, I worry this will lead to a game where every party is a generalist party.  My brother-in-law Dave once had this commentary about a Star Wars RPG without limits.  He said that characters could take any power, so really every character should be a medic with particular powers, which made the game uninteresting.

I'm nearing 1,000 words, so I'll be brief.  I'm playing around with a thematic idea.  In Illeria, there are multiple artificer guilds that send prospectors into Illeria.  I'm thinking of dividing abilities into six archetypes, and saying that each guild specializes in two.  I might make it that in the campaign mode, parties occasionally find items allowing them to take something outside of the two, but that will make the spellcaster in a melee/archery party really special.  I'll also probably make that optional for pick-up games.

How to make Illeria end

Weekly updates:
This was another productive week.  At this point I have 7 abilities that I'm putting near done (maybe 6?), and 3 in the "to do" category.  I had another playlets with my brother Nick.  He had some good insights.  He also seemed to do much better with the game this time around, leaving me to think that the problem could be fixed by explaining the game better, rather than fixing it more.  I've also made some progress on writing the book.

For this week, I want to talk about what makes an interesting mission and end-game condition.

A thing I've struggled with in Illeria is how to trigger the end of the game, and how to decide who wins.  It wasn't quite an afterthought, but really, most of my initial focus was on how combat worked, rather than how it ended.

Most of my initial conditions were taken from more classic wargames, where you fought until one team was totally dead (like in Heroscape or X-wing).  I also played games that had some kind of morale system (like Necromunda), but that lead to a similar outcome where you won by killing enemies.  The problem that I had with these missions was that they never felt interesting.

I eventually stumbled onto a system where parties that controlled certain landmarks gained a tactical advantage in the game.  This was eventually co-opted into also leading to victory conditions.  I also eventually changed it so that the tower's don't give you a tactical advantage, you just need them to win.  This made the games feel so much more interesting.  I think what I liked about them is that you had to cover different parts of the table at once.  Without that, it really felt like both parties just smashed into each other.  

On that note, I made a realization in this last week: For missions to be interesting, there needs to be a reason for characters to go to multiple parts of the board.  Thus, I've had a few missions where there is just one objective, such as take something that is in the middle of the board.  This ends up not changing the result all that much: characters smoosh into each other, it's just that now they battle over a single thing, rather than just trying to kill each other.

One of the things I am struggling with now is how to put a theme on things.  There was a great interview I listened to about game design with Joseph McCullough (the guy who made Frostgrave).  He said it is really important to ask yourself what keeps your characters on the table.  And I guess that much of the fighting in Illeria is about characters trying to secure resources that they can bring back to Avon to sell (on that note, I changed my mind about which story I want to Illeria as a resource-rich outland, partly because of the above interview).  But, some missions don't fit that super well.  For example, a mission I've played that felt really fun is one where each player selects a leader, and their team wins if they kill their enemy's leader, or if they move their leader off the enemy's boar edge.  It's fun, but it doesn't fit the theme, at least not in an obvious way.  I don't know, I think I just need to come up with a story that can explain it.

A level system to a point system and back again

Weekly updates:

This week was a really productive week.  I did several more playtests, and feel confident enough in four of the initial five abilities that I'm adding a three more.  I also did my outside playtest this week with my brother Nick, and it went decently.  Nick basically liked the game, though stumbled on a number of rules.  It has left me wondering whether I need to simplify the rules, or just make them clearer.  I'm going to spend time this week making a quick reference sheet, and seeing if that helps.

For this week, I'll start with a question: How do you decide the relative value of two characters?

Ideally, if the game lets you take either character X or character Y, then they should be approximately equally good (with caveats described in a previous post).  If Y was better, then why would you ever take X?  Many games deal with this by having a point system with high levels of granularity.  For example, in Necromunda, a plasma pistol is 25 points, a bolt pistol is 20 points, a sword is 10 points, etc.  This gives you the ability to make things differently powerful; otherwise, all weapons cost the same, then why would anyone ever pick the sword over the plasma pistol?  

That said, not every game does this.  For example, in Team Fortress II each person plays a character, so all of the characters need to be similar-ish (again, with previous caveats).  Similarly, in D&D, the granularity is based on levels, so going up a level should be equally good for everyone (at least approximately).  Perhaps what makes these games different is that you get one of a thing, rather than a variable number of things.

In old versions of Illeria, I assumed characters could have up to three levels, each of which granted an ability (with a few strong abilities costing two levels).  Each character was then worth 2 points plus their number of levels, making two level 3 characters of similar value to two level 1 characters plus a level 2 character.  The reason for this was somewhat historical.  When I started Illeria, I simplified playtesting by giving each character an ability.  I had eventually planned to turn everything into point values, but the more I playtested, the more the level system stuck.  And, making every ability worth one or two levels simplified balancing the abilities.  For example, at one time I had an ability called "Deep Wound;" I struggled with it and eventually removed it because it was never as good as having a bow, summoning demons, etc.  It was also easier to balance using the simulations I used at the time.

There was a great GDC short-talk on legacy effects in games.  Soren's thesis was that games inherit rules from older editions, prototypes, or games in the genre, and those historical accidents don't always serve a purpose.  For example, rolling dice to move is fundamental to classic games like Backgammon, Monopoly, or Parcheesi.  Hero's Quest and Clue also used this mechanic, even though it would arguably make more sense and work better if characters moved 6 spaces per turn.  It seems like the only reason for this mechanic is that its what boardgames did at the time (which is probably why it is so rare these days).  Soren's whole point was that one should occasionally step back and ask, "Why is this mechanism here?  Is it still serving a purpose, or making the game more complicated?" and that it is better to remove dumb rules that patch them.

Thinking about this, I realized that my level system might be such an inheritance, and that the game might be better if I had a point system.  That way, I could have a 3 point ability called "Deep Wound" and a 7 point ability called "Bow;" rather than having to eliminate "Deep Wound."  I updated my simulations to give points values, and started to plan out how to update the campaign mode to (so that characters advance by gaining +5 points, rather than 1 level).  

I have since decided that greater granularity may not be better for Illeria.  One reason is the limits of playtesting.  It would take a ton of games to determine if a bow is 5 vs. 6 vs. 7 points, and I don't have an army of employees to playtest Illeria.  But, I can playtest enough say that a bow is good enough to be a 1 point ability, but too weak to be a 2 point ability.  I think part of this is just that granularity suggests accuracy in a way that levels don't: I think players will be more forgiving if 1st level character with a bow and a 1st level character with Soul Touch are not quite the same; if a character with a bow costs 10 points and a character with Soul Touch costs 9 points, then you really expect the bow to be about 10% better.  

I think it will also simplify things for the player.  In my experience, it is so much easier to design a party of 4 level 1 characters and a level 3 character, as opposed to five characters with 120 points worth of abilities.  It also makes the campaign mode easier: a character that learned something gains 1 level (which they can always spend on an ability), as opposed to +4 points (which would be worthless if they want a 5 point ability).

So, I guess no change, but now I understand why I'm doing something better. 

A way to track information for dozens of models

Weekly updates: I think I've decided to put animated creatures back in.  I've figured out a simpler way of using them.  I didn't get enough playtesting in this week, but have asked friends if they are interested.  I have two takers so far, and am going to playtest the first game on Wednesday.  Wish me luck!  I didn't get much time to work on a post because I have been editing the rules for the upcoming playtest.

This will be a short one this week.

Illeria, like many wargames, has this problem where you need to keep track of a lot of information.  Each character can take a certain amount of damage before dying, and occasionally there are status effects to track (e.g. needs to reload, has 3 residual magic, is cursed for 2 turns).  This is easy to do in a game like D&D, because you only have one character.  But in Illeria each team has something in the ballpark of a dozen models, which can get quite complicated.

How have other games solved this problem?  Warhammer and Necromunda have relatively little information about each model.  For example, most of the models have only 1 health, so they are either at full health or dead (and removed from the board).  This simplifies things a lot.  I've thought about doing something like this for Illeria, but I think the game would loose too much if every character was one attack from death.  Warmachines and MechWarrior have specialized cards for each character that you write on.  I tried this for a time, and I found it to be a pain to use, because I needed to create a new set every time I played.  Also, those games have an advantage that Illeria won't, which is that they have their own models, so it is easier to put a picture of the model on the card (in my case, my playtesters often lost track of which card corresponded to each character).  In Frostgrave, you keep track of everything on a sheet of paper.  That works decently, but I kept being annoyed with needing to create a new sheet for every playtest.  Also, the opposing player needs to ask if they want information about your characters.  

One idea I tried was using dice as counters.  This had a couple problems.  It was easy to track one thing (like health), but if you wanted to track multiple factors, it meant putting several dice next to a character, which got complicated.  I also would regularly forget which dice was meant to be a counter, and roll it.  This was actually part of the impetus for switching to only six-sided dice.  Finally, it clutters up the table, something Sarah complained about a lot.  

So, based on one of Sarah's suggestion, I came up with a new idea.  I cut out a bunch of semicircles on white card stock, and covered them in clear tape.  I then used ticky-tack to attach these on the bottom of the miniatures.  Then, whenever I need to track something, I write it on the semicircle with a dry-erase marker.  This works super well.  The information follows the miniature everywhere it goes.  It is easily reusable.  Everyone can see it.  I can put any information I want on it.  And it doesn't clutter up the table.  I can't believe I didn't think of this earlier (thank you Sarah!).  My only criticism is that they can make the models a little hard to place on terrain.  I'm thinking in the future I'll make them out of paper, rather than card stock.

Illeria's core gameplay loop, and does combat need to be more interesting?

Weekly updates:

This was a busy week for personal reasons, though I did get 3 playtests in.  I'm also rethinking removing animated creatures.

Today's post is more thinking out-loud than usual.

Last week I said:
"Honestly, part of [wanting to keep summoned creatures] is that the rules are just so interesting, and I worry that a game with just melee combat, archery, and magic would be too boring (which, as I write this makes me worry that the game might not be interesting enough)."
This stuck for me.  I wondered if Illeria could be an interesting enough game if there were just melee fighters and archery, or if that would be too dull; if it was the later, I wondered if Illeria was a bad game.  Right then I watched a video explaining the concept of a core gameplay loop, which helped spur on my thinking.  

A core gameplay loop is the basic thing a player does repeatedly.  In board games, I think it is basically the turn.  For example, in Slay the Spire, you draw cards, and then decide how to allocate your energy to playing those cards (balancing hurting monsters, defending yourself, and empowering yourself for future turns).  For The Resistance, you send teammates on missions, and use the results of those missions to figure out who the spies are.

What is the core gameplay loop of Illeria?  You pick a character, move it around a board, and perform an action (typically roll dice to attack enemies, though perhaps pick up loot or use a power).  This is the same as D&D, Frostrgrave, and most wargames (except that in most wargames, you move and attack with several creatures at once).  

What worried me is that the "perform an action" part of the gameplay loop might not be interesting enough on its own.  I personally find that rolling dice to attack enemies is usually the least interesting part of any wargame.  For example, I sometimes watch Let's Play videos of Warhammer Fantasy, and I often skip through large fights, because they are just so tedious ("I have 10 characters fighting, so I roll 21 dice to hit, and I reroll my misses, then I roll 16 to wound, then you make 10 armor saves; next, my character goes... then my other character... now my horses...").  And I find games that are little more than rolling dice to be really boring.  For example, Guerrilla Miniature Games does Let's Play videos on lesser known games (e.g. Dracula's America, or Wild in the Streets), and many seem like they are just rolling dice (which is sad, since the theme of the games is often fascinating).

I've tried to make the melee and archery in Illeria fast and simple, rather than interesting, because I don't want them to be what Illeria is about.  I use a pretty standard system, like in Hero's Quest - the attacker rolls dice to determine how many times they hit, then the defender rolls dice to block hits, and unblocked hits deal damage.  

Some games do have really interesting "do action" parts.  I like opposed rolls in Infinity, where attacking an opponent often triggers a counterattack.  I like how in Blood Bowl your turn ends once you fail a roll, which forces you to prioritize the order you do things.  Spellcasting in Warhammer Fantasy is interesting, because both players have a limited number of dice, and using them often carries risk, so there is strategizing about every roll.

And I did try to have interesting subsystems in my game.  I think my spellcasting system is innovative: to cast a spell you need to roll above a certain number, and if you fail, the spell blow ups in your face.  But, each time you cast a spell, future spells are harder to cast.  This creates an interesting dynamic where spells are a limited resource, but in a softer way than most: in most games, you have a discrete amount of magic resource (e.g. spell slots in D&D, MP in Final Fantasy) which you can use freely until it is gone; in Illeria, you never really use it all, but you also don't know if casting a spell will prevent you from casting your next spell.  Controlling summoned creatures is also meant to be interesting.  Creatures begin with a certain number of control points, and every turn they lose some (randomly determined); once they are gone, your creatures are lost.  So, there are important decisions for how many resources you spend preserving your control points.

Then again, many games have boring combat systems, but succeed because the most important part of the game is not about rolling dice.  X-Wing is perhaps the best example of this - the combat system is plain, but the fascinating point of the game is about moving ships.  And I could say something similar about Kings of War and Necromunda.  I guess I just like games about movement.  

I wonder if adding too many interesting subsystems could ruin a game?  Like, King of War's magic system is pretty plain (basically just another form of archery); I wonder if it would be better or worse if it had Warhammer's magic system.  I think maybe worse, because it would add to the complexity, and adding that might make the core fun part of the game less prominent.  

This is one where I'm still at a loss.  I guess that deep down, I think I should aim to have Illeria be interesting enough to be fun with melee fighters.  But, I do like flavor that comes from interesting subsystems, and I think they add, rather than take away from Illeria.  This is something I'll need to ponder more...

Ending animated creatures

Weekly updates:
I finished making the first draft of the main section of my rulebook.  I set up a game in roll20 to play with friends (I still need to contact people about playing).  I played one game with Sarah, though none on my own.  The game went okay, though it has me rethinking Soul Touch (I think I'll still keep it, but maybe not make it a demo-game ability).  I'm going to try to play today.  I'm also getting itchy to add new abilities, which will hopefully motivate me to playtest.  

Ok, for today...

Illeria is a skirmish-level game, meaning that you bring a party that has four to seven characters.  There are a lot of great things about this, particularly the low bar to entry.  However, it means is that you can't bring a horde of weak characters, which is a play style that I really like.  To fix this, I wanted characters to be able to have minions.  

I originally envisioned two types of minions: summoned creatures and animated creatures.  I wanted them to feel different to play.  Summoned creatures were meant to feel like wild creatures that they could lose their mind at any minute and attack their owner.  This made them a high-risk-high-reward strategy: they are strong, but if you lose them they may come after you.  Animated creatures were meant to be 100% loyal, but a little clunky.  In earlier versions of Illeria, you had to choose particular attack modes for them (such as targeting one character, or going after the nearest enemy).  Eventually I decided that was too many rules, and just made them act like other characters.  Either way though, these were meant to be a lower risk strategy: animated creatures would not be as strong as summoned creatures, but they would never turn on you.

A drawback I've noticed for either type of minion is that beginners to wargaming struggle to play them.  Basically, most new players can handle a team of five characters (which is 10 when you consider both worlds), but if each character controls three minions, then that becomes 20 miniatures (40 in both worlds), which ends up being overwhelming.  Sarah has been one of these people, and she's often suggested I remove them.  I've also wondered if the reason I don't have trouble is because I made this game, and I've wondered if more experienced players would struggle too.

Both kinds of creatures have always made the game harder to make.  First, they require their own set of rules to control.  Second, they become harder to balance; for example, explosive attacks are much more damaging, but four weak minions can bog a strong character for a long time.  It has become a running joke between Sarah and I that her advice when I have a problem is to get rid of summoned and animated creatures.  I've often been given the advice, "Kill your darlings;" i.e. that one needs to be open to eliminating one's favorite parts of the game if it will make the game better.  But it has been really hard.  Honestly, part of it is that the rules are just so interesting, and I worry that a game with just melee combat, archery, and magic would be too boring (which, as I write this makes me worry that the game might not be interesting enough).

That said, a couple weeks ago I decided to get rid of animated creatures.

What finally did them in was the new way I'm implementing differences between the two worlds.  In earlier versions of the game, both worlds worked about the same, so it made sense that you could have magical creatures in both worlds from turn one.  However, in the more recent version, the physical world is devoid of magic until you take actions to link it to the spirit realm.  I've struggled a lot with how to make animated creatures work in this setting.  One idea was that the animated creatures would start in the spirit world, and the player would need to send them back and forth.  Another idea was that the player would start with deactivated animated creatures in the physical, and would need to activate them.  Both of these created problems, and I found myself needing to make up new rules to fix them.  Eventually I just said, "enough is enough," and entertained the idea of taking them out.  I found that this simplified my game significantly.  Part of what spurred this on is my goal to be done by May.  Maybe if I'm way ahead of schedule, or if I release expansion rules, I can put them back in.  But for now, they're gone.

I do plan on keeping summoned creatures in, because I think I figured out a way to make them work in a really neat way.  (and as I write this, I've almost wondered if it would be better to eliminate summoned creatures, and give one more chance to having animated creatures jump between worlds)

I think one nail in the coffin as well was that when I told Sarah this, she told me that despite years of hearing about this, she had only just realized that there was a difference between summoned and animated creatures.  So, maybe they didn't really fill in different niches the way I thought.

How I automated calculating point values

Quick update, I picked my initial abilities:
(1) Head Scramble- The character can cause a target to become "shaken" (a condition that makes them unable to use most abilities, and may paralyze them).
(2) Soul Touch- If the character damages their target in melee, they can deal extra magical damage.
(3) Red Magic- The character can cast direct-damage spells.
(4) Shot- The character can make a basic ranged attack.
(5) Call Animals- The character can summon four weak creatures.
I'm also trying to price different stat boosts (e.g. what is it worth for a character to have +1 Armor?).  

Okay, on to today's topic...

In a previous post, I described how I could automate the initial stages of playtesting using computer simulations.  In these simulations, I'd have each ability fight each other ability 1000's of times, to estimate the odds that each wins.  However, let's say my simulations find that Head Scramble beats Soul Touch in 55% of battles, it beats Red Magic in 60% of games, it beats +1 Armor in 40% of games, etc.; what do I do with that?

Probably my all time favorite GDC talk covered this question in talking about balancing fighting games (it was by Alex Jaffe, the same guy who talked about cursed problems).   He talks about the important thing being meta-game balance, i.e. that every fighter (or in my case, every ability) does not need to be evenly matched against every other fighter/ability, but that there are strategies one can play to win at least 50% of the time.  For example, in rock-paper-scissors, the meta-game strategy is to play each strategy 33% of the time.  So, my goal becomes for there to be some meta-game strategy (i.e. one should play Head Scramble X% of the time, Soul Touch Y% of the time, etc.), where every strategy should be played some amount of the time, and no strategy should be played almost all the time.  This idea really jives with another great commentary I saw recently, which said that character's don't have to be evenly matched, but that you need to remove any "Gods" (i.e. characters that always beat non-God characters) or "Garbage" (i.e. characters that always lose to non-Garbage characters).  

How do we calculate the meta-game strategy?  Well, if you have an odds matrix (i.e. the chance each ability beats each other ability), you can do this with linear programming.  As a basic example, let's change rock-paper-scissors so that rock beat paper 20% of the time (rather than 0%).  The best strategy is that you should play rock and paper each about 38.5% of the time, and scissors 23% of the time.*  We can use similar math for fight outcomes, getting the frequency that each ability should be selected.  The unfortunate thing is that the best meta-game strategy pretty much always excludes several abilities.

*The intuition here is that you should play rock more, because it is a numerically better strategy (having no  loss), and because you think your opponent will play rock more, you should also play paper more (because it usually beats rock).  Scissors thus gets left out and chosen less.  

Alex's brilliant idea was that you should see if a character could still be used in a less-than-optimal meta-game strategy.  For example, you could ask something like, "If I only needed to win 45% of games, then how often could I play Head Scramble?" and he'd get a range of between 5% and 60%.  Then, abilities would be "balanced" if the upper limit for each character was at least 5% (otherwise it is never a good idea to play a character, making it Garbage), and the lower limit was no more than 50% (otherwise you should always play a character, making it a God).

A difference in Alex's game is each player had one character, so Gods and Garbage are a problem; in my game, a player can bring one God or multiple Garbage characters.  So, I go a step beyond Alex, to calculate point values of each ability.  For each ability, I alter the odds matrix to increase their chances against each other ability by 5%, and then calculate the new meta-game strategy.  If I find that the boosted ability should be used 0% of the time, then I give it a one-point advantage in the future.  I've used a few different ideas for what a "one-point advantage" should be.  Currently, if a character has an X-point advantage, and its opponent has a Y-point advantage (where X>Y), then at the start of the battle the character rolls X-Y dice, and for every 6, its opponent takes 1 damage (repeated in each world).  I then recalculate the meta-game strategy, reassess advantages, and repeat this process 30 or 50 times (until it approaches an equilibrium).  I then calculate the average advantage of a character with no abilities, and subtract the advantage for each ability.  For example, if "No Ability" typically has a 4-point advantage, and Head Scramble has a 2.5-point advantage, then Head Shot is worth 1.5 points.  

Once I have the points, it gives me an estimate of the relative values of abilities.  For example, my initial simulations were:
+1 hit point  => 4.8 points
+1 attack => 5.73 points
+1 armor = 6.07 points
shot => 7.33 points
soul touch => 7.0 points
head scramble => 4.2 points
red magic => 5.8 points
call animals => 6.93 points

Thus, this suggests that the abilities are decently well balanced, though Head Scramble is a little weak.  

Like I said previously, I then use my intuition on these.  For example, I think I'm under-valuing Head Scramble, as it's probably a good assist ability.  But, this gives me a first chance to estimate if any abilities are too weak or too strong, and make quick adjustments (before my one-hour playtest sessions).  

Illeria Resolution 2021

If you're reading this, you survived 2020.  Congratulations!!!

I've been working on Illeria for what feels like forever.  For 2021, I'm making a resolution to finish it by the end of May.  By "finished," I want to have a copy that I could send to a publisher (ideally Osprey games).

So far I have:
-A decent set of base rules for the turn, linking, etc.
-Base rules for melee combat, archery, magic, and summoned creatures.
-Code for simulating combat between two characters.
-Flavor text for the "Illeria as a prison island" scenario.
-Drafts of the rules (for previous editions).
-A basic campaign mode (written for a previous edition).

Here is what I still need to do:
-Final tweaking for the base rules, and playtesting with a wider group.
-Create a couple dozen well-balanced abilities.
-Write an updated draft of the rules, which needs to be finalized in many ways.
-Finalize the campaign mode (if I do it).

I think this is doable in five months.  It is at least something to shoot for.

I decided I wanted to go with the "Illeria as a prison island" backstory, rather than "Illeria as a resource-rich outland".  I was torn about it, but after hearing an interesting GDC talk, realized I was torn because both options were good.  I went with the prison island for two basic reasons.  First, it is more unique - the other one was basically another game about fighting over resource in a harsh landscape, similar to Frostgrave and several other games by Osprey.  Second, I have more finished than the other backstory - I currently have a campaign mode and flavor text tailored to that story.

There are a couple tweaks I want to test for the basic rules.  For example, armor saves are currently done by rolling X dice, and preventing 1 damage per roll of 4+; I'd like to see what it feel like if armor checks need a 5+.  I can test these final tweaks either myself or with Sarah.  However, Illeria is almost at a point where I should ask friends for help playtesting.

The abilities are probably the hardest thing on the above list.  My plan is to start with a small list of abilities, maybe five.  I'll test those - first with code, then with games - until they seem reasonably balanced.  Then, I'll add a few more abilities, and test those.  I'll continue this for as long as I can, until my deadline.  This will be a good natural limit for how many abilities to have, and also force me to prioritize the most interesting ones.

On that note, as I wrote about previously, my code is for one character fighting against another (i.e. in one world).  The problem with this is that abilities have different impacts in the spirit world vs. the physical world.  For example, attacks that ignore armor are stronger in the physical world, because all physical-world characters wear armor.  I want to update the code so that the fight takes place in both worlds.

I need to work more on updating the draft of the rules.  I'll need to make a ritual of it, like when I write scientific papers.  I also need to get some advice from my sister (a graphic designer).  She saw the previous edition of the rules, and had commented how back the background art on the pages was.  She's right; and it's weird, because it looks good on the computer, but when printed out, it looks like something a child drew.

The campaign will be a stretch goal, but I think doable.  Worst case scenario, I can cut it.