Wolf has a thing for fire arms. He has many books on their history, schematics, and technical data, which has led to years of argument over the pros and cons of each weapon system. He is also an avid war gamer, who is starting to dislike many conventions of that gaming genre.
Image Link
So I designed a simple game system for him, which included illustrations, technical data, and history for all of the included weapons.
The biggest challenge was to give each weapon meaningful game play differences, which would hopefully also capture their real-world characteristics as well. Making each weapon different is easy, making the differences meaningful was not.
Several games that represent weapons as "to Hit" and "to Kill" die rolls. This system is flawed because it can not be meaningfully balanced.
For example: if Gun A hits 1/6 of the time and kills 5/6 on a hit, and Gun B hits 5/6 of the time and kills 1/6 on a hit, there is effectively no difference between them. Furthermore, if Gun C hits 2/6 of the time and kills 5/6 on a hit, Gun C is just better than the others.
Many video games address this problem by placing the best weapons in hard to reach places, in exposed areas, or in positions equidistant to all players.
Many also introduce rate of fire and ammunition limits, though both of these are essentially just extensions of "to Hit" and "to Kill". e.g. If a weapon hits 1/6 of the time, kills 6/6 on a hit, and fires up to 6 times per turn, it is no different from a weapon that hits & kills 6/6 but fires only 1 time a turn. Of course a player's skill in using a game's interface will break that balance -- even if the 1 shot kill weapon is mathematically very accurate, a player is more likely to hit his target the more shots he gets.
Some table top miniatures games address this by introducing range. e.g. A shotgun may be very powerful within 3 inches on your table top, but useless beyond that. This does add some interesting decisions to a game, because players must decide how best to exploit terrain and positioning in relation to their weapon. It's still pretty shallow, as there will usually be a "correct" position to take, and more importantly the differences between weapons still aren't very robust. (Is it really interesting if shotgun A has slightly more range, but less power than shotgun B?)
My attempt at a solution was to get rid of turns and have all players resolve their actions simultaneously. To avoid chaos, actions happen in a set order, though the order may be effected by the character's stats or weapon.
For example: while all shooting actions are resolved in the same phase, a player firing a pistol will resolve his shots before a player firing a rifle. This is because a pistol is lighter and smaller than a rifle, and subsequently can be aimed more quickly (especially in confined spaces). On the flip side, the pistol fires a weaker bullet, and is much less likely to kill it's target.
I also gave weapons two specific firing actions: multi hit and single hit kills. The big differences are a weapon's MHK action will always precede its OHK action. Also, multiple MHK rolls may be taken during a turn (depending on the weapon's clip size) and each successive roll gains a bonus. Alternatively, OHK rolls ignore an opponent's armor.
I decided against a separate suppression action, because the MHK action should already cover that. For example, if a player chooses to roll an 'impossible shot' against an opponent hidden by cover, any other MHK roll taken against the same opponent during the same round will get a bonus. This means that if the opponent chooses to stand up (or even pop out of cover to attempt an OHK), his likelihood of being blasted will be very high, which would encourage him to stay down.
Those are some of the basic concepts anyway. I look forward to testing it a bit more, and further refining the formula I used to define each weapon's stats.[/img]
Image Link
So I designed a simple game system for him, which included illustrations, technical data, and history for all of the included weapons.
The biggest challenge was to give each weapon meaningful game play differences, which would hopefully also capture their real-world characteristics as well. Making each weapon different is easy, making the differences meaningful was not.
Several games that represent weapons as "to Hit" and "to Kill" die rolls. This system is flawed because it can not be meaningfully balanced.
For example: if Gun A hits 1/6 of the time and kills 5/6 on a hit, and Gun B hits 5/6 of the time and kills 1/6 on a hit, there is effectively no difference between them. Furthermore, if Gun C hits 2/6 of the time and kills 5/6 on a hit, Gun C is just better than the others.
Many video games address this problem by placing the best weapons in hard to reach places, in exposed areas, or in positions equidistant to all players.
Many also introduce rate of fire and ammunition limits, though both of these are essentially just extensions of "to Hit" and "to Kill". e.g. If a weapon hits 1/6 of the time, kills 6/6 on a hit, and fires up to 6 times per turn, it is no different from a weapon that hits & kills 6/6 but fires only 1 time a turn. Of course a player's skill in using a game's interface will break that balance -- even if the 1 shot kill weapon is mathematically very accurate, a player is more likely to hit his target the more shots he gets.
Some table top miniatures games address this by introducing range. e.g. A shotgun may be very powerful within 3 inches on your table top, but useless beyond that. This does add some interesting decisions to a game, because players must decide how best to exploit terrain and positioning in relation to their weapon. It's still pretty shallow, as there will usually be a "correct" position to take, and more importantly the differences between weapons still aren't very robust. (Is it really interesting if shotgun A has slightly more range, but less power than shotgun B?)
My attempt at a solution was to get rid of turns and have all players resolve their actions simultaneously. To avoid chaos, actions happen in a set order, though the order may be effected by the character's stats or weapon.
For example: while all shooting actions are resolved in the same phase, a player firing a pistol will resolve his shots before a player firing a rifle. This is because a pistol is lighter and smaller than a rifle, and subsequently can be aimed more quickly (especially in confined spaces). On the flip side, the pistol fires a weaker bullet, and is much less likely to kill it's target.
I also gave weapons two specific firing actions: multi hit and single hit kills. The big differences are a weapon's MHK action will always precede its OHK action. Also, multiple MHK rolls may be taken during a turn (depending on the weapon's clip size) and each successive roll gains a bonus. Alternatively, OHK rolls ignore an opponent's armor.
I decided against a separate suppression action, because the MHK action should already cover that. For example, if a player chooses to roll an 'impossible shot' against an opponent hidden by cover, any other MHK roll taken against the same opponent during the same round will get a bonus. This means that if the opponent chooses to stand up (or even pop out of cover to attempt an OHK), his likelihood of being blasted will be very high, which would encourage him to stay down.
Those are some of the basic concepts anyway. I look forward to testing it a bit more, and further refining the formula I used to define each weapon's stats.[/img]
Thursday night was relatively quiet this week. Between the explosion on Tuesday, being constantly interrupted by our landlord, and preparing to move at the end of the month we just haven't done a good job pulling testers in. Still, Shawn, Mecha, and I had a chance to review Brad Fuller's most recent game submission Assembly.
(Unedited and unrehearsed, shot on the fly in bursts to reduce file size)
In a nutshell, Assembly is a collection game, where each asset has a different value to each player. Collection is simultaneous and utilizes an interesting tie-breaking mechanic similar to JetSetters' turn order mechanic, while asset value is determined for each player by a secret card (not unlike the plan cards in Zombies of Los Muerte High).
Assembly also features the Dismembermen, which were first seen in Get Bit!. While this makes the game sound like a mash-up, the decisions Brad has made do not and everything feels unique and connected to the game.
Assembly is Brad's third game submission, and it shows. While not bug free, Assembly is mechanically more mature and better thought out than his previous submissions. Perhaps even more importantly, the core mechanics and materials provide a clearer direction to explore as we continue to develop the game.
Material wise, we would most likely produce this completely on cards (using the full color process we started using in Ballot Bots and Dubious). Because Get Bit! wasn't shrink wrapped in China, we could offer Assembly as an add-on option for around six dollars.
Alternatively, we could offer it as a stand alone game (it can be played without the Dismembermen, though everything is more fun with them!) and offer the Dismembermen for individual sale in the store. Ultimately the decision depends on what people are interested in.
Most of our feedback for Brad revolves around balancing out point values and making rules and actions more consistent throughout the game. Sometimes we feel like the smallest changes have the biggest impact while developing these games.
Here's looking forward to the next draft of the game. While it won't come out this year under any circumstances, if development goes smoothly, we can look forward to it in early '08.
(Unedited and unrehearsed, shot on the fly in bursts to reduce file size)
In a nutshell, Assembly is a collection game, where each asset has a different value to each player. Collection is simultaneous and utilizes an interesting tie-breaking mechanic similar to JetSetters' turn order mechanic, while asset value is determined for each player by a secret card (not unlike the plan cards in Zombies of Los Muerte High).
Assembly also features the Dismembermen, which were first seen in Get Bit!. While this makes the game sound like a mash-up, the decisions Brad has made do not and everything feels unique and connected to the game.
Assembly is Brad's third game submission, and it shows. While not bug free, Assembly is mechanically more mature and better thought out than his previous submissions. Perhaps even more importantly, the core mechanics and materials provide a clearer direction to explore as we continue to develop the game.
Material wise, we would most likely produce this completely on cards (using the full color process we started using in Ballot Bots and Dubious). Because Get Bit! wasn't shrink wrapped in China, we could offer Assembly as an add-on option for around six dollars.
Alternatively, we could offer it as a stand alone game (it can be played without the Dismembermen, though everything is more fun with them!) and offer the Dismembermen for individual sale in the store. Ultimately the decision depends on what people are interested in.
Most of our feedback for Brad revolves around balancing out point values and making rules and actions more consistent throughout the game. Sometimes we feel like the smallest changes have the biggest impact while developing these games.
Here's looking forward to the next draft of the game. While it won't come out this year under any circumstances, if development goes smoothly, we can look forward to it in early '08.
Here is the Inquisition rules video, shot this Thursday night. Filming went a little smoother this week, except we ran out of battery power a bit shy of the end of the movie...
Many thanks to Luke & Shawn for joining up this weekend.
Check out last weeks video.
This week we reviewed a dismember-man submission by Brad Fuller and tried three variants of Peer Sylvester's Yawn (aka project 13). This week's session was also recorded (see above). Because Brad's submission was for review (and not ours to develop) we didn't include it. Also, since two of the Yawn variants didn't work, we didn't include those either ;-)
Yawn / Project 13
As mentioned, we played three variants of Peer's game this week. For context, Peer's game has been fun to play from the beginning, but because it was designed more like a Euro-style board game, we have experienced some logistical challenges when converting it into an all-cards Sushi game.
The biggest challenge has been clutter -- keeping track of what each player has rated a topic, what order the topics are in, and who's 'guessed' what took 15 cards for only 3 players. Since everyone played their cards at once, there was plenty of room for accidentally over loading a single topic (which each player can only play once on), and thus destroy the statistical analysis.
Following clutter, was game length and variety. With only 14 cards left to use for topics, this 5 player game could last 6 rounds at best.
Previous passes were a little hard to control -- they either made the game too focused on the statistics (and not on the psychology of the group) OR they had no statistics at all, which produced a flat score.
The 1st variant (seen in the video) separates the narrator's actions from those of the other players, which made for a less cluttered game. Also, by giving the narrator control over everything except ratings, game play stayed focused. Lastly, because the narrator holds the only 'guess' card, we can increase the number of topics to 33, which makes a longer, more varied game.
The game can still be effected by 'wild card' choices by the players, but that's not unacceptable (as long as you pay attention to who you are playing against, and their tells). Also, each player's ratings should be identifiable from both sides, to ensure overlapping card plays don't happen. Art is going to be a big challenge too, but at least we have access to color now, and juxtaposition of any kind (regardless of art style) is where this games gets its fun.
Variant 2nd let the narrator rate each topic, and had the other players make guesses (players scored bonus points if their guesses were unique). It also let the narrator guess who would correctly guess his own question. This last bit was interesting, as the narrator could give tells to a trailing player, in order to keep his own lead, but over all the game lacked interaction between the players. Ultimately, it felt like a narrator only game, where other players had to occasionally choose and play cards.
Variant 3rd brought only one topic out at a time. Everyone rated it, everyone guessed, and a correct guess netted a single point. It was quick, easy to play, but had no flavor. Without multiple topics to juxtapose the experience was dull, points were too incremental (all players were tied 90% of the game), it give the narrator too much influence over the outcome, and because each player had to have a multiple guessing cards it still had clutter and cut down the number of topic cards. All in all, the 3rd was utter rubbish :-)
Some Assembly Required
Brad submitted a straight forward 'build your man and get points for what you used' concept this week. The project has potential (especially if we can get some painted dismember men to use with it) because it is a simple game and doesn't use blind card plays as it's driving mechanic! Brads next challenge will be to refine the mechanics the players use to choose their parts. More on this project as it develops.
The session ended remarkably early this week, thanks in no small part to the satisfaction we got from the first Yawn variant. The experience was so positive, that we chose not to test Gerlcenaries (aka Project 12). In fact, while I will likely make artwork for it, P12 isn't likely to get published. Not a big loss, and anyone who wants to play it will be able to download a free PDF copy anyway :-D
cheers,
Gavin
Yawn / Project 13
As mentioned, we played three variants of Peer's game this week. For context, Peer's game has been fun to play from the beginning, but because it was designed more like a Euro-style board game, we have experienced some logistical challenges when converting it into an all-cards Sushi game.
The biggest challenge has been clutter -- keeping track of what each player has rated a topic, what order the topics are in, and who's 'guessed' what took 15 cards for only 3 players. Since everyone played their cards at once, there was plenty of room for accidentally over loading a single topic (which each player can only play once on), and thus destroy the statistical analysis.
Following clutter, was game length and variety. With only 14 cards left to use for topics, this 5 player game could last 6 rounds at best.
Previous passes were a little hard to control -- they either made the game too focused on the statistics (and not on the psychology of the group) OR they had no statistics at all, which produced a flat score.
The 1st variant (seen in the video) separates the narrator's actions from those of the other players, which made for a less cluttered game. Also, by giving the narrator control over everything except ratings, game play stayed focused. Lastly, because the narrator holds the only 'guess' card, we can increase the number of topics to 33, which makes a longer, more varied game.
The game can still be effected by 'wild card' choices by the players, but that's not unacceptable (as long as you pay attention to who you are playing against, and their tells). Also, each player's ratings should be identifiable from both sides, to ensure overlapping card plays don't happen. Art is going to be a big challenge too, but at least we have access to color now, and juxtaposition of any kind (regardless of art style) is where this games gets its fun.
Variant 2nd let the narrator rate each topic, and had the other players make guesses (players scored bonus points if their guesses were unique). It also let the narrator guess who would correctly guess his own question. This last bit was interesting, as the narrator could give tells to a trailing player, in order to keep his own lead, but over all the game lacked interaction between the players. Ultimately, it felt like a narrator only game, where other players had to occasionally choose and play cards.
Variant 3rd brought only one topic out at a time. Everyone rated it, everyone guessed, and a correct guess netted a single point. It was quick, easy to play, but had no flavor. Without multiple topics to juxtapose the experience was dull, points were too incremental (all players were tied 90% of the game), it give the narrator too much influence over the outcome, and because each player had to have a multiple guessing cards it still had clutter and cut down the number of topic cards. All in all, the 3rd was utter rubbish :-)
Some Assembly Required
Brad submitted a straight forward 'build your man and get points for what you used' concept this week. The project has potential (especially if we can get some painted dismember men to use with it) because it is a simple game and doesn't use blind card plays as it's driving mechanic! Brads next challenge will be to refine the mechanics the players use to choose their parts. More on this project as it develops.
The session ended remarkably early this week, thanks in no small part to the satisfaction we got from the first Yawn variant. The experience was so positive, that we chose not to test Gerlcenaries (aka Project 12). In fact, while I will likely make artwork for it, P12 isn't likely to get published. Not a big loss, and anyone who wants to play it will be able to download a free PDF copy anyway :-D
cheers,
Gavin
Knights and armor theme 8 Bit characters. Feel free to use them elsewhere (they won't be directly accessible in your profile for a while). The characters on the upper row are 'mid' levels, the characters on the bottom row are for newly joined members.
More variants, including a scant'ly clad male figure for the ladies :P
High level user profile character options. If we ever get the time to sit down and use these in a flash game they would have more hit points, armor, etc.
We ran a double session this Thursday. The first session was held at our office, and focused on the review of a game submission. The second session started several hours later at GWG's Franklin headquarters and served as a final review for Ballot Bots.
Session 1
David Lovejoy, Mecha and I sat down around 7:00 with a fresh prototype laid out before us. The game, entitled "Yawn", was submitted shortly after Origins but only now have we been able to review it.
Yawn was an interesting submission to work with, because it's components weren't complete per-see (all of the components and their functions were given, but the specific values and card texts were not). It was also clear that many of it's component's would be better suited to something with higher production values than a sushi game. So the prototype was already modified before the review.
Yawn is a group social response game of sorts. Mechanically, each player nods, yawns, or falls asleep in response to a topic. Players then score points based on how accurately they could predict the topic which would get enough yawns to put an NPC to sleep. Yawns are cumulative across topics, so players can also use a basic understanding of probability when guessing the outcome. After a few rounds, the scores are tallied and the player with the highest total wins.
(top down: a 2 yawns card, 4 suits, and 4 face down yawn ratings)
Our prototype didn't have particularly interesting topics, and I'm not sure if Yawn / Sleep is an engaging action / theme, but mechanically the game worked respectfully well. If the designer agrees to it, I'd swap "Wake or Sleep" with "Fight or Flight", and make the topics light hearted. Who at the table dares "fight" "the dragon"? Who dares fight "the hobo"?
The only significant criticism we had with the game is that players receive only 1 point if they are right, no matter how hard / easy the guess was. This meant scores tended to bunch together, and a player far behind was clearly not going to win after a certain number of rounds.
So we played the "What if?" game and gave each 'topic' a different point value (and made those values cumulative. So the later the winning topic came up during the round, the more points it was worth). The results were not awful exactly… so much as it added a contradictory motivation. Since later topics were worth more, players based their Yawn / Sleep responses around points, instead of emotional responses to the actual topics. This wasn't bad, because players could still use probability to guide their choices, but wasn't good either because it undermined the social focus. You can read the rules we used here
Session 2
Later in the evening, David and I joined Luke Naden, Ezekiel Bailey, Zack Bailey, and Andrew Steeble at the Franklin head quarters of GWG. The session was much less focused (as those after 11:00 often are… n't) but we got some solid 4 player action on Ballot Bots done.
The results were very satisfying. The player with the most experience on the game certainly won, but not without good competition, and only by a soft margin. Also, the last place player was only down 10 points from the leader. The high score was 48 points, which for 4 players feels right.
The game is very easy to understand (being a "Play a card, and do something different depending on whether it is higher or lower than the opponents' cards" mechanic game), and aside from the number of cards that start in each player's hand, and set collection bonuses everything is written on the cards in play. I think it's at least as good as JetSetters and look forward to seeing this one in reviewers' hands.
Session 1
David Lovejoy, Mecha and I sat down around 7:00 with a fresh prototype laid out before us. The game, entitled "Yawn", was submitted shortly after Origins but only now have we been able to review it.
Yawn was an interesting submission to work with, because it's components weren't complete per-see (all of the components and their functions were given, but the specific values and card texts were not). It was also clear that many of it's component's would be better suited to something with higher production values than a sushi game. So the prototype was already modified before the review.
Yawn is a group social response game of sorts. Mechanically, each player nods, yawns, or falls asleep in response to a topic. Players then score points based on how accurately they could predict the topic which would get enough yawns to put an NPC to sleep. Yawns are cumulative across topics, so players can also use a basic understanding of probability when guessing the outcome. After a few rounds, the scores are tallied and the player with the highest total wins.
(top down: a 2 yawns card, 4 suits, and 4 face down yawn ratings)
Our prototype didn't have particularly interesting topics, and I'm not sure if Yawn / Sleep is an engaging action / theme, but mechanically the game worked respectfully well. If the designer agrees to it, I'd swap "Wake or Sleep" with "Fight or Flight", and make the topics light hearted. Who at the table dares "fight" "the dragon"? Who dares fight "the hobo"?
The only significant criticism we had with the game is that players receive only 1 point if they are right, no matter how hard / easy the guess was. This meant scores tended to bunch together, and a player far behind was clearly not going to win after a certain number of rounds.
So we played the "What if?" game and gave each 'topic' a different point value (and made those values cumulative. So the later the winning topic came up during the round, the more points it was worth). The results were not awful exactly… so much as it added a contradictory motivation. Since later topics were worth more, players based their Yawn / Sleep responses around points, instead of emotional responses to the actual topics. This wasn't bad, because players could still use probability to guide their choices, but wasn't good either because it undermined the social focus. You can read the rules we used here
Session 2
Later in the evening, David and I joined Luke Naden, Ezekiel Bailey, Zack Bailey, and Andrew Steeble at the Franklin head quarters of GWG. The session was much less focused (as those after 11:00 often are… n't) but we got some solid 4 player action on Ballot Bots done.
The results were very satisfying. The player with the most experience on the game certainly won, but not without good competition, and only by a soft margin. Also, the last place player was only down 10 points from the leader. The high score was 48 points, which for 4 players feels right.
The game is very easy to understand (being a "Play a card, and do something different depending on whether it is higher or lower than the opponents' cards" mechanic game), and aside from the number of cards that start in each player's hand, and set collection bonuses everything is written on the cards in play. I think it's at least as good as JetSetters and look forward to seeing this one in reviewers' hands.
This is a in-office rule set for Make Frank Puke (the game!). These rules are in response to another game, which we ultimately felt worked better ;-) so play at your own risk!
Choose a player to go first. That player chooses the order in which Frank drinks his different types of alcohol.
Each player places one of his NUMBER cards face down under each type of alcohol. This represents the number of drinks of that type of alcohol purchased for Frank to drink.
Each player now guesses when Frank will pass out (or throw up). Guesses are shown by choosing that alcohol's card from the player's hand, and placing it face down in front of him.
Now Frank begins drinking. Reveal all of the NUMBER cards under Frank's first alcohol type. If the total is two values higher than the number of players in the game, Frank PUKES and the turn is over. If the total is less than two values higher than the number of players, reveal the NUMBER cards under the next alcohol type. NUMBER cards are cumulative from previous alcohol types, so Frank will always PUKE by the fourth alcohol type.
When Frank pukes, reveal the Guess cards. Players who guessed the alcohol type that Frank would PUKE correctly receive points for the $ value of each alcohol type Frank drank.
For example:
If Frank drank Beer ($1) and Wine ($4) before he PUKED (he puked while drinking the wine), then players who guessed Wine receive $5 points.
Players who did not guess correctly do not receive points. Write down each player's score and play the round again. The player with the highest score after 7 rounds (a week of drinking) wins. Frank always looses.
Choose a player to go first. That player chooses the order in which Frank drinks his different types of alcohol.
Each player places one of his NUMBER cards face down under each type of alcohol. This represents the number of drinks of that type of alcohol purchased for Frank to drink.
Each player now guesses when Frank will pass out (or throw up). Guesses are shown by choosing that alcohol's card from the player's hand, and placing it face down in front of him.
Now Frank begins drinking. Reveal all of the NUMBER cards under Frank's first alcohol type. If the total is two values higher than the number of players in the game, Frank PUKES and the turn is over. If the total is less than two values higher than the number of players, reveal the NUMBER cards under the next alcohol type. NUMBER cards are cumulative from previous alcohol types, so Frank will always PUKE by the fourth alcohol type.
When Frank pukes, reveal the Guess cards. Players who guessed the alcohol type that Frank would PUKE correctly receive points for the $ value of each alcohol type Frank drank.
For example:
If Frank drank Beer ($1) and Wine ($4) before he PUKED (he puked while drinking the wine), then players who guessed Wine receive $5 points.
Players who did not guess correctly do not receive points. Write down each player's score and play the round again. The player with the highest score after 7 rounds (a week of drinking) wins. Frank always looses.
While David works on images for Ballot Bots, I'm making similar figures for use as avatars on the website. Show above are some bondage boys.
Jerry and I haven't worked it out yet, but one thing I would like to explore is allowing users to 'unlock' new profile images when they reach higher user levels. Above are two rows of figures, the junior avatars are below their leveled up counterparts... these being power-ranger-esq examples
Played a lot of Rainbow 6 vegas on the PS3 network last night. Got me thinking about more detailer soldier avatars (left), which led to robot soldiers (middle), and then tron (or maybe megaman... hard to tell)
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The Mister Taru show "gets you over the hump"
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The Mister Taru show "gets you over the hump"
Drinking with GWG