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.