Metagameplay: Alliances

We had another successful playtest here today. A new player was introduced to the rules and gotten up to speed, which highlighted the need for a printed-out set of rules. As usual, the spectacle of seeing us rolling dice and "using superhuman powers" caused a few other employees to stare with curiosity. Sean was our newbie player who didn't fare well in the long run, but says he enjoyed it. He's a sharp cookie who inquired about a possible application of one of the portal teleport powers, too, so it reaped a benefit in that way as well. During the post-match discussion, it was remarked that Sean basically got the short end of the stick with the random unit asignment. Someone suggested that he would have benefited from an alliance with another player. Ideas flashed back and forth and very quickly a meta-mechanic began to take shape. TDog's concept of a formalized mechanic for creating an alliance goes like this: Any Player can propose an alliance to another player at any time. In order to cement the alliance, the two (or more) parties must have units physically meet somewhere on the board (to set up the secret handshake, if nothing else). From that point on, the Players involved are Allies. At the moment, being allied with another Player doesn't carry very much weight, but it would at the very least allow allied characters the option of relating to each other in friendly ways. In today's match, for example, an alliance with Sean would have allowed the ally's units to utilize the teleportation system that is normally restricted to use only by his own characters. The idea behind this alliance mechanic is that it will create tension and force Players to consider how much they actually trust the other Player. They'll have to consider the worth of sacrificing a turn to send a character to the meeting. Since the meeting is announced publicly, it has a chance of becoming a focal point for the aggression of the other Players. And, of course, there's the chance that one of the Players in the meeting has no desire to ally with you, and instead is looking forward to having you walk right into his clutches. Bwah ha ha and all that. So that's the proposed alliance mechanic at the moment. Further components will have to be devised that make the alliance worth the risks outlined above. Once the alliance is made, there should be some tension involved in deciding when and how to break the alliance (alliances aren't forever), so that will be considered as well.

Snow Day

Sitting here at home on a definite Snow Day. I'm in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, a city that is not accustomed to getting a lot of snow. Some here and there, but not the 12 to 15 inches that got dumped on us yesterday. So today I am working from home via the marvel of the Remote Desktop. I can enjoy my tea, talk with my sweetie, and still be a productive member of society. Ah, technology, you hath deprived me of a work-free day while supporting my game-designing livelihood! A bit bittersweet, there.

Unit complexity.

I'm going to review and classify my units on a scale indicating their learning curve. I'm doing this because I'm concerned about the distribution of unit complexity in this game. I'm willing to accept some complexity, but I'd like to be able to identify which units have the greatest chance of going misunderstood and, therefore, underused. I'm going to start with a scale of 1 to 10 as I add in Classes, with Class 1 being the simplest units, and Class 10 being the most obscure. In making this classification attempt, I need to have a baseline for comparison, which in this case is a hypothetical "normal human" as represented in this game. A Normal human has the following stats: Life,7 Move,6 Attack,6 Defense,6 Actions,0 Class 1 - Stats-boosted units, easiest to learn, with the most in common. Once you know the rules of the gameworld, you know how to use these units. Example: Granite, Jackrabbit. Class 3 - Units with powers that interact with or affect any of the common stats. These are built on the foundation of the common stats, and introduce concepts like 'Effect Range' and 'Line Of Sight'. Examples: Caduceus, Railgun. Class 5 - Units with powers that introduce new effects or objects to the game. These effects/objects conform to many common rules, but there are often significant alterations or special cases. Examples: Permafrost(frozen characters have restricted actions, but are not actually stunned), Sere(Flame wall). Class 9 - Units with powers that ignore or alter fundamental rules. These powers have little in common with other units, and must be learned individually. Examples: Gravity(localized rules on movement), Parasite(has unique metarules governing power theft and use). I'm leaving gaps on the assumption that I will reevaluate these classes as I review the existing set of characters. This classification should give me some insight into whether or not I am letting myself succumb to feature creep as I have done in the past. It is important that I have some method of verifying that I am holding to my core design concepts for Lunchbox, one of which is a low to moderate entry barrier for new players.

Can't we all just get along?

I saw an eye-catching, annoying, and ultimately ineffective commercial last night. Mom comes to the door with a plate of food, knocks on the gamer's bedroom door (with a discarded controller as a doorknocker - nice touch), and slides the food under the door. The voiceover refers to feeding your gamer "who probably won't make the football team". Now, I can't really take issue with the factual aspect of the statement. I can go along with the idea that 'most' gamers probably *won't* make the football team, if only for the same reason that most of many types of people probably won't make the football team: only dedicated football-minded people make the team. I can go the other way and say that most players on the football team probably won't rise to the top of the heap in a currently-popular RTS or FPS. What does bother me is the heavily implied negativity that goes along with the statement. You can see from the look on Mom's face that she's decided to be noble about things. Johnny won't be on the football team, but she loves him anyways. This is just one piece of a generally negative attitude regarding video gaming. A personal anecdote: My wife and I were invited over to the home of our mutual friends to play games for the evening. We ended up playing a game of Scrabble which took about an hour or so. During this time, there wasn't very much commentary or chitchat, as people were being respectful of the effort the other players were exerting. As far as I can tell, everyone enjoyed themselves. I know I did. However I know that if the other husband and I had suggested playing a multiplayer video game, we'd get the rolling eyes, wobbly heads, and tones of voice that say: "Why would we do that? We got together to be social, not play silly games!" Um....

Prime thoughts

I have 59 characters roughed in now, and at the same time I am re-evaluating whether or not I want to hard-set the number. That might be too limiting, in so far as it will make me reject a perfectly fun game for not having enough characters. Instead of forcing additional characters into the system that people won't use, I should focus on creating an inuitively fun collection of units which are all worthwhile using.

Wage slave

Working on Lunchbox (my in-development board game) over the weekend, I've got 54 superhuman characters with their special powers. My grand plan is to have 60 for maximum ease of multipleyer games (60 divides neatly into teams for 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 players), so I need at least 6 more. I seem to get inspiration for these powers at odd times, when I'm just mentally ruminating on things that have little or no obvious relevance. I think, after all of this time, that there is now a dedicated part of my brain that watchdogs everything else that I see, do, think, or say. Just a game design/superhuman powers filter that snags all sorts of things as they rattle around in my head or pass by my senses.

Something resembling progress

*yawn*... *stretch*... Oy, I feel like my creativity muscles are only just getting back into use lately. Which feels odd, since of course my preoccupation with superhuman strategy gaming has continued unabated for, oh... the past decade. That preoccupation has been largely involved with the building up, breaking down, and general tweaking of my own superhuman strategy game, Lunchbox. Having actually managed to drive away one of my best friends through no other agent than my own nigh-incessant chatter regarding various nuances of how superhumans function and how to represent them in-game, I have of late been more tight-lipped on the subject. In my case, tight-lipped means only talking about it for 80% of the time *sheepish grin*. Anyways, since I have the need to blab on it, and since there is at least potentially an audience listening, I'm going to blab on it a bit here when I have the chance.