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.