Okay, I've been distracted for the past couple weeks on another game. It's called "For Science." It was created because of a contest on the Board Game Designer's Forum. In some ways, it is there to be everything that Illeria is not. It's a very light, simple game. The rulebook is all of 2 pages, it takes 30 or 45 minutes to play, and is just vicious and fun.
Strangely enough, one or two playtests and it's already going really well. I don't know, the guys who have tried it all love it, though I think it could use some work (they are not quite the critics or perfectionists I am; this is probably why every game design advice column says don't just play with your friends). All the same, it's not like I have to playtest for hundreds of possible rule combinations with this one.
On the whole, this has been good, I think. I just hope I don't get disheartened by how easy this one is...
Monday, July 13, 2009
Sunday, June 28, 2009
New Theme
I hadn't realized that I hadn't posted on this yet. I did finally come up with a new theme idea that I liked. I previously had all these ideas about doomsday or a sinking Atlantis-type island, but none of them quite hit the mark. Then, I talked to my old roommate and personal muse Mike, and he suggested combining them. The best way I can think of explaining it is just by copying the new introduction. It's exciting, because this theme really finally feels right.
No one is really all that surprised by what Illeria has become. Why should we be? The very creation of this island was an act of evil. It has been home to the most horrific acts in living memory. I can only imagine that this is God's way of punishing us.
The Island of Illeria was created by Emperor Balthazar, a man who could frighten the Devil himself, as a prison camp. Criminals, revolutionaries, POWs, and other deviants of society, all were sent here. We spent our days doing hard labor, having information extracted by whatever means necessary, or acting as the test subject for new forms of warfare. Sometimes it felt like we were being tortured for no reason other than the entertainment of our guards. No one escaped. Illeria was not an inn or a dungeon, it was a grave.
Balthazar wanted to experiment with a new form of warfare, by allowing his soldiers to tap into the power of the spirit world. He knew that tearing a hole between the real world and the spirit world could be dangerous, and feared that this could have terrible consequences. Not only was Illeria far away, but also already had a small military base. Soldiers and wizards were brought to Illeria to learn how to focus their energy in both worlds, and in how to tap into the mystic powers of the spirits. As an unfortunate side effect, many of the prisoner learned as well.
Shortly after the rift between the worlds was opened, strange creatures began appearing on the island. We called them "phantoms." They are hard to describe, they just look like something not of this world. It very quickly became clear that they were not happy with what we had done. Battles with the phantoms often proved extremely bloody, so our wizards searched for ways to contain these monsters. Eventually, they developed a type of magical crystal. We placed these crystals around the island, and they controlled the influx of phantoms, at least for the most part. Illeria was able to grow, more permanent settlements were built, and the population of both soldiers and prisoners continued to increase.
But such a fragile defensive system was not meant to last. The wizards designed the crystals to protect against even the strongest attacks from the phantoms. They never expected the attack to come from natives of the real world. When the prisoners rioted, many of the crystals were shattered, leaving the flood gates wide open for invasion.
With Illeria being overrun by phantoms, order broke down. Soldiers and prisoners alike factioned into small groups, trying to improve the chances of their own survival. People quickly discovered that shards of the crystals still granted a modest amount of protection from the phantoms, who now roamed the island in numbers too big to control. The only hope that anyone holds anymore is that they might survive long enough for the monthly supply ship to arrive.
Other than that, basically same old same old, wishing I could playtest more, and friends always being too busy. I'm going backpacking with my dad next week, and have another trip planned before the end of the summer, so I'm not sure how much more of this we'll get to. Oh well I guess, hopefully I'll have a little free time in grad school (maybe?).
PS (after thought, edited) I had someone on www.bgdf.com say something to the effect of me putting too much energy into this, and that it's more important to create a good game than a good story. I don't know, that wasn't a concern on The Forge (and RPG site). Maybe it's just coming from the perspective of boardgamers (I mean seriously, how much of a story is there to, say, Monopoly, Risk, Go, Othello, Settlers of Katan, etc?). I mean, could you do a wargame like this without a rich background? I have trouble thinking of military games that don't include a good deal of mechanically useless backstory in their books (well, except for really abstract ones, and those based on historical battles). I don't know, perhaps idea was that the game should come first, and the story should follow (although, at The Forge, they kind of have the opposite idea, that you need a good story, or your game won't have an aim).
Either way, I don't really think I'm doing anything wrong (I'm certainly not going to throw my story away once I've bothered to come up with them), and I doubt that a game has every been hurt by too much story. I guess I'm just thinking out loud here.
No one is really all that surprised by what Illeria has become. Why should we be? The very creation of this island was an act of evil. It has been home to the most horrific acts in living memory. I can only imagine that this is God's way of punishing us.
The Island of Illeria was created by Emperor Balthazar, a man who could frighten the Devil himself, as a prison camp. Criminals, revolutionaries, POWs, and other deviants of society, all were sent here. We spent our days doing hard labor, having information extracted by whatever means necessary, or acting as the test subject for new forms of warfare. Sometimes it felt like we were being tortured for no reason other than the entertainment of our guards. No one escaped. Illeria was not an inn or a dungeon, it was a grave.
Balthazar wanted to experiment with a new form of warfare, by allowing his soldiers to tap into the power of the spirit world. He knew that tearing a hole between the real world and the spirit world could be dangerous, and feared that this could have terrible consequences. Not only was Illeria far away, but also already had a small military base. Soldiers and wizards were brought to Illeria to learn how to focus their energy in both worlds, and in how to tap into the mystic powers of the spirits. As an unfortunate side effect, many of the prisoner learned as well.
Shortly after the rift between the worlds was opened, strange creatures began appearing on the island. We called them "phantoms." They are hard to describe, they just look like something not of this world. It very quickly became clear that they were not happy with what we had done. Battles with the phantoms often proved extremely bloody, so our wizards searched for ways to contain these monsters. Eventually, they developed a type of magical crystal. We placed these crystals around the island, and they controlled the influx of phantoms, at least for the most part. Illeria was able to grow, more permanent settlements were built, and the population of both soldiers and prisoners continued to increase.
But such a fragile defensive system was not meant to last. The wizards designed the crystals to protect against even the strongest attacks from the phantoms. They never expected the attack to come from natives of the real world. When the prisoners rioted, many of the crystals were shattered, leaving the flood gates wide open for invasion.
With Illeria being overrun by phantoms, order broke down. Soldiers and prisoners alike factioned into small groups, trying to improve the chances of their own survival. People quickly discovered that shards of the crystals still granted a modest amount of protection from the phantoms, who now roamed the island in numbers too big to control. The only hope that anyone holds anymore is that they might survive long enough for the monthly supply ship to arrive.
Other than that, basically same old same old, wishing I could playtest more, and friends always being too busy. I'm going backpacking with my dad next week, and have another trip planned before the end of the summer, so I'm not sure how much more of this we'll get to. Oh well I guess, hopefully I'll have a little free time in grad school (maybe?).
PS (after thought, edited) I had someone on www.bgdf.com say something to the effect of me putting too much energy into this, and that it's more important to create a good game than a good story. I don't know, that wasn't a concern on The Forge (and RPG site). Maybe it's just coming from the perspective of boardgamers (I mean seriously, how much of a story is there to, say, Monopoly, Risk, Go, Othello, Settlers of Katan, etc?). I mean, could you do a wargame like this without a rich background? I have trouble thinking of military games that don't include a good deal of mechanically useless backstory in their books (well, except for really abstract ones, and those based on historical battles). I don't know, perhaps idea was that the game should come first, and the story should follow (although, at The Forge, they kind of have the opposite idea, that you need a good story, or your game won't have an aim).
Either way, I don't really think I'm doing anything wrong (I'm certainly not going to throw my story away once I've bothered to come up with them), and I doubt that a game has every been hurt by too much story. I guess I'm just thinking out loud here.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Archery
So, I playtested two games recently. It's funny, the second one was a really fun game, but I felt like I got little to nothing out of it as a playtest. Pretty much everything worked (well, minus a few understanding problems). It's funny how that goes, you want there to be problems, because if there aren't, it means you can't improve.
The first of the two playtests I did hit a problem. Archery was still too powerful. I talked to my old roommate about this, and he made a really good point: if you look at history, ranged attacks always have beat melee attack, unless the melee possess a) superior armor, or b) superior numbers. This is probably part of why archery has almost always been a bit overpowered.
I guess I should explain, archery actually never gave me a problem in the Spirit World, only the Real World. I think the main reason: in the Spirit World, characters were so mobile, that even if the Spirit World weapons were stronger, they could get around it.
For my first attempt to fix this problem, I made archery do so little damage that it seemed like a waste. Then I fixed that, which made it return to the original problem. Next, I decided that if characters were given ranged weapons, it meant they had a weaker melee attack. This wasn't enough to fix the problem. Another problem was that I noticed that originally, if a character got a bonus to her Aim stat, it meant that she was a better fighter both at range and in melee. So, I decided that I could split up Aim into Ranged Aim and normal Aim (the way many games, such as Warhammer and War Marchines, do it). I also decided to give characters an automatic +2 Dodge (meaning that they were 20% harder to hit) against ranged attacks. Both were rather ugly attempts to fix the problem.
The problems I ran into this recent playtest: First, even if I split Aim into two parts, a character with +3 Ranged Aim (meaning 30% more likely to hit), was still too powerful (for example, it mean that they could shoot across the board and into cover, and still hit half the time). Second, for the entire game, I (the designer) kept forgetting the Dodge bonus. The result of this is that my real world characters were shot to death as they ran across the field (despite taking lots of advantage of cover).
The solution: First, I've decided to abandon Ranged Aim. Basically, now there is no way to improve one's ranged attack power (or, maybe I'll add an ability later). Second, I made an adjustment to the way range is measured. The system I've been using is similar to the d20 system (and I'm sure others, though I can't remember where I've seen it). For example, if your bow has a range of 8", then there was no penalty for shooting someone 1-8" away, -1 to hit between 9-16", -2 for 17-24", and so on. I decided to change it so that 1-8" is -1 to hit, 9-16" is -2 to hit, and so on. I figure this adds a certain amount of elegance that was lost with "You have one Dodge for melee, and an adjusted Dodge for archery." Third, I decided to adjust the range of a bow.
Hopefully now you can still have at least a mediocre archery group, one who can sometimes win, but won't always win. We'll see how it works.
The first of the two playtests I did hit a problem. Archery was still too powerful. I talked to my old roommate about this, and he made a really good point: if you look at history, ranged attacks always have beat melee attack, unless the melee possess a) superior armor, or b) superior numbers. This is probably part of why archery has almost always been a bit overpowered.
I guess I should explain, archery actually never gave me a problem in the Spirit World, only the Real World. I think the main reason: in the Spirit World, characters were so mobile, that even if the Spirit World weapons were stronger, they could get around it.
For my first attempt to fix this problem, I made archery do so little damage that it seemed like a waste. Then I fixed that, which made it return to the original problem. Next, I decided that if characters were given ranged weapons, it meant they had a weaker melee attack. This wasn't enough to fix the problem. Another problem was that I noticed that originally, if a character got a bonus to her Aim stat, it meant that she was a better fighter both at range and in melee. So, I decided that I could split up Aim into Ranged Aim and normal Aim (the way many games, such as Warhammer and War Marchines, do it). I also decided to give characters an automatic +2 Dodge (meaning that they were 20% harder to hit) against ranged attacks. Both were rather ugly attempts to fix the problem.
The problems I ran into this recent playtest: First, even if I split Aim into two parts, a character with +3 Ranged Aim (meaning 30% more likely to hit), was still too powerful (for example, it mean that they could shoot across the board and into cover, and still hit half the time). Second, for the entire game, I (the designer) kept forgetting the Dodge bonus. The result of this is that my real world characters were shot to death as they ran across the field (despite taking lots of advantage of cover).
The solution: First, I've decided to abandon Ranged Aim. Basically, now there is no way to improve one's ranged attack power (or, maybe I'll add an ability later). Second, I made an adjustment to the way range is measured. The system I've been using is similar to the d20 system (and I'm sure others, though I can't remember where I've seen it). For example, if your bow has a range of 8", then there was no penalty for shooting someone 1-8" away, -1 to hit between 9-16", -2 for 17-24", and so on. I decided to change it so that 1-8" is -1 to hit, 9-16" is -2 to hit, and so on. I figure this adds a certain amount of elegance that was lost with "You have one Dodge for melee, and an adjusted Dodge for archery." Third, I decided to adjust the range of a bow.
Hopefully now you can still have at least a mediocre archery group, one who can sometimes win, but won't always win. We'll see how it works.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
New theme
First off, before I begin, I guess I've been working on this game on and off for like 2 1/2 years now. Almost 3. Mostly off, but still, it feels like a while. Anyway, yesterday I ran into someone at the local gaming store who said he'd been working on his game for 9 years, and was so excited that it was probably going to get finished by the end of the year (it looked like a neat idea, http://www.figurefight.com/). It kind of hit me: 9 years. Dang. There is a part of me that thinks of that as a bad omen. I really hope it doesn't take me that long. Like, get this done by the end of the year was my hope, but I guess we'll see.
Anyways, on to the theme. There was always something about escaping from a prison island that never quite sat right with me. I think in the end that the focus of the theme seemed too much about escaping, not about fighting. So, I think I'm going to scrap that idea. Instead, I'm replacing it with a new theme: basically, Illeria was once the world center of culture, science, and especially magic. Somehow, there was a downfall, and now everyone is trying to escape. Each battle will be about acquiring things that will help you on your route to escape, and in the end of each campaign, only a few will survive.
What is causing the downfall though is the problem. I'm letting the ideas jiggle around in my head right now. The favorite idea for now is a doomsday prophecy, but I don't know if I can make that fit with the other elements. I'm still not sure just why people would fight to avoid a doomsday prophecy. But yeah, I go into this with no ambivalent or reserved feelings though, so yay! Things on that end are, well, aligning themselves to fall into place.
Maybe I'll have lots of time this weekend to think about it during the unicycle rally.
Simon
“‘Where to we go from here?’ ‘Who says we’re here?’” – George Carlin
Anyways, on to the theme. There was always something about escaping from a prison island that never quite sat right with me. I think in the end that the focus of the theme seemed too much about escaping, not about fighting. So, I think I'm going to scrap that idea. Instead, I'm replacing it with a new theme: basically, Illeria was once the world center of culture, science, and especially magic. Somehow, there was a downfall, and now everyone is trying to escape. Each battle will be about acquiring things that will help you on your route to escape, and in the end of each campaign, only a few will survive.
What is causing the downfall though is the problem. I'm letting the ideas jiggle around in my head right now. The favorite idea for now is a doomsday prophecy, but I don't know if I can make that fit with the other elements. I'm still not sure just why people would fight to avoid a doomsday prophecy. But yeah, I go into this with no ambivalent or reserved feelings though, so yay! Things on that end are, well, aligning themselves to fall into place.
Maybe I'll have lots of time this weekend to think about it during the unicycle rally.
Simon
“‘Where to we go from here?’ ‘Who says we’re here?’” – George Carlin
Saturday, March 21, 2009
"Good enough"
There was a post I remember reading on The Forge about how it's better to release a meh game then not to release any game at all. It's something I'm eventually going to need to convince myself, but it's hard.
There are really two elements that I worry will not be good enough. The first is the theme. My game is set on a prison island. It is supposed to be about survival, and is supposed to be dark. At least in the real world. In the fantasy world, it is supposed to be utterly surreal. I worry that I don't do either of those points justice. I'm trying to work on that. I've debated trying to do my own artwork for the surreal part. I've also been working on flavor text to stick here and there, and on changing the names to really reflect this. Still though, I've sometimes thought that perhaps my basic back-story is not good enough.
Second, I worry sometimes that this game isn't getting playtested enough. I mean, it would take years and years to playtest every combination of abilities. I worry that inevitably there is going to be one or two strategies that dominate the rest, and that'll be no fun. Plus I worry that I won't be able to thoroughly test each special mission and special rule. I've debated if I should just give it a one or two time go, and see if they're alright. The later I'm less worried about, because if, say, the Assassinate mission is horrible, then no one will play it. I've sometimes debated if I'm going to need to drop some of them (or if it would be better to just release them under insufficient playtesting).
I don't know, I remember reading on The Forge a comment about a game (can't remember which one, but saw it a few times), that the game had such a good idea, but just wasn't well done. I worry sometimes that that will be Illeria. I don't know, as I said, I'll do what I can, but at some point a meh game is better than no game.
Simon
PS Random note: I really need to change my bio, stop saying that I'm about to go to Africa. I've done that, I'm back
“The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to be credible.” – Mark Twain
There are really two elements that I worry will not be good enough. The first is the theme. My game is set on a prison island. It is supposed to be about survival, and is supposed to be dark. At least in the real world. In the fantasy world, it is supposed to be utterly surreal. I worry that I don't do either of those points justice. I'm trying to work on that. I've debated trying to do my own artwork for the surreal part. I've also been working on flavor text to stick here and there, and on changing the names to really reflect this. Still though, I've sometimes thought that perhaps my basic back-story is not good enough.
Second, I worry sometimes that this game isn't getting playtested enough. I mean, it would take years and years to playtest every combination of abilities. I worry that inevitably there is going to be one or two strategies that dominate the rest, and that'll be no fun. Plus I worry that I won't be able to thoroughly test each special mission and special rule. I've debated if I should just give it a one or two time go, and see if they're alright. The later I'm less worried about, because if, say, the Assassinate mission is horrible, then no one will play it. I've sometimes debated if I'm going to need to drop some of them (or if it would be better to just release them under insufficient playtesting).
I don't know, I remember reading on The Forge a comment about a game (can't remember which one, but saw it a few times), that the game had such a good idea, but just wasn't well done. I worry sometimes that that will be Illeria. I don't know, as I said, I'll do what I can, but at some point a meh game is better than no game.
Simon
PS Random note: I really need to change my bio, stop saying that I'm about to go to Africa. I've done that, I'm back
“The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to be credible.” – Mark Twain
Monday, March 16, 2009
Trend towards simplicity
There was a post recently on BGDF.com, where someone asked if our games tended to become simpler, or more complicated as time went on. This game has done both, though honestly, I feel like most of it has been towards simplification.
The one asterisk I add to this is that I tried to develop the game in pieces. The last major game project I worked on ("Conquest of Diluna," a fantasy A&A-style game), the game began by me throwing everything in at once. The result: nothing was balanced, and I needed to balance several items at a time. In short, it was hard. It really took to about the 7th or 8th playtest before I had a game that didn't radically change from one time to the next. Here, the first time I played this, it was as simple as it gets. Each character had 1 advancement. There were no classes. There was no magic. There were no summoned creatures or animated creatures. And there were only 5 special abilities per world (including stat boosts). All I really wanted to do was test out if my basic mechanics (3 phases, orders that are mostly unchangeable, 2 worlds) were fun. It turns out they were. So, with that, I went into the game, proceeding slowly, trying to make sure each level of complexity worked before adding something new in.
That said, here are things that I've added in since the beginning (that weren't originally envisioned):
-Multiple missions
-Abilities where one character can influence their doppelganger
-Player aids (although, this is an addition that simplifies things)
-Terrain types
-Partial actions (although, this somewhat replaced disobeying commands)
-The "Retreat" action
Here are things I've dropped:
-Different classes having different stats
-Randomly determined HP
-A separate weapon system (never added, but originally I planned on it, this just got absorbed into abilities)
-One character must meditate at a time (basically, originally when a person was up in one world, they needed to be down in the other)
-Group orders
-Disobeying commands
-3 different types of savings throws
-The "Defend" order
Here are things I've streamlined:
-Spell failures (from roll a d10, on a 1, roll on another table -> to roll 2d6 whenever a spell fails)
-What happens when the general dies (it went from everyone makes Intelligence tests every turn -> to your # of orders are reduced)
-Damage (from either you do full damage or half damage -> to either you do full damage or x2 damage)
-Animated creatures (from you give them a specific order that you need to write yourself, much like programming a computer with a set of "if: then" statements -> to you choose from a list of pre-made commands)
There is probably more, although this is all that I can think of for now. Cheers!
Simon
PS It's still weird to think that after all of this simplification, the rulebook is still almost 70 pages long.
“Everybody has their moment of great opportunity in life. If you happen to miss the one you care about, then everything else in life becomes eerily easy.” – Douglas Adams
The one asterisk I add to this is that I tried to develop the game in pieces. The last major game project I worked on ("Conquest of Diluna," a fantasy A&A-style game), the game began by me throwing everything in at once. The result: nothing was balanced, and I needed to balance several items at a time. In short, it was hard. It really took to about the 7th or 8th playtest before I had a game that didn't radically change from one time to the next. Here, the first time I played this, it was as simple as it gets. Each character had 1 advancement. There were no classes. There was no magic. There were no summoned creatures or animated creatures. And there were only 5 special abilities per world (including stat boosts). All I really wanted to do was test out if my basic mechanics (3 phases, orders that are mostly unchangeable, 2 worlds) were fun. It turns out they were. So, with that, I went into the game, proceeding slowly, trying to make sure each level of complexity worked before adding something new in.
That said, here are things that I've added in since the beginning (that weren't originally envisioned):
-Multiple missions
-Abilities where one character can influence their doppelganger
-Player aids (although, this is an addition that simplifies things)
-Terrain types
-Partial actions (although, this somewhat replaced disobeying commands)
-The "Retreat" action
Here are things I've dropped:
-Different classes having different stats
-Randomly determined HP
-A separate weapon system (never added, but originally I planned on it, this just got absorbed into abilities)
-One character must meditate at a time (basically, originally when a person was up in one world, they needed to be down in the other)
-Group orders
-Disobeying commands
-3 different types of savings throws
-The "Defend" order
Here are things I've streamlined:
-Spell failures (from roll a d10, on a 1, roll on another table -> to roll 2d6 whenever a spell fails)
-What happens when the general dies (it went from everyone makes Intelligence tests every turn -> to your # of orders are reduced)
-Damage (from either you do full damage or half damage -> to either you do full damage or x2 damage)
-Animated creatures (from you give them a specific order that you need to write yourself, much like programming a computer with a set of "if: then" statements -> to you choose from a list of pre-made commands)
There is probably more, although this is all that I can think of for now. Cheers!
Simon
PS It's still weird to think that after all of this simplification, the rulebook is still almost 70 pages long.
“Everybody has their moment of great opportunity in life. If you happen to miss the one you care about, then everything else in life becomes eerily easy.” – Douglas Adams
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Too long...
Wow, okay, I'm back, it has been far too long since I've posted.
As of right now, I've played a few games recently. I was really proud of myself, one of my most recent playtests was the first playtest that didn't have any real criticisms. There were a few, "Well, I'm not sure, I'd need to play a few more games before I could give you a definite answer," but nothing like, "This is broken." YAY!
Unfortunately I've been having trouble finding time to play with my friends. I need to try harder. At this point, I'm actually thinking it's ready to release to the outside world. Pattie, the woman who runs the local gaming store, has suggested putting up a flyer advertise for playtesters. I'm going to go put that up today, and see how it goes.
I'll keep you all in touch!
As of right now, I've played a few games recently. I was really proud of myself, one of my most recent playtests was the first playtest that didn't have any real criticisms. There were a few, "Well, I'm not sure, I'd need to play a few more games before I could give you a definite answer," but nothing like, "This is broken." YAY!
Unfortunately I've been having trouble finding time to play with my friends. I need to try harder. At this point, I'm actually thinking it's ready to release to the outside world. Pattie, the woman who runs the local gaming store, has suggested putting up a flyer advertise for playtesters. I'm going to go put that up today, and see how it goes.
I'll keep you all in touch!
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