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.