Game Depth & Details - How much is too much?

Hey Laperen

The game's focus would be on character development and combat. It would definitely be more of a tactical, combat-heavy RPG. One main theme is that characters would not bound by classes or skill trees, but spend experience to train any ability from any training type, allowing for complete open-style sandbox gameplay (like Skyrim):

-Magic: Spells are cast using the base ability from an element (determines the effect of the spell) in conjunction with a manifestation (determines who is being affected).
-Archery: Abilities based around using ranged weapons.
-Fighter: Abilities based around using melee weapons and/or being in melee range.
-Stealth: Abilities based on using stealth and trickery to gain the upper hand.

For me, the story has a lot of meaning, as I have a lot of ideas that would be good expansion and future material for the game. The basic story in this game is a kingdom has a new king who wants to begin his reign with a celebratory, first-annual arena tournament in ten weeks time. All combatants must qualify by passing the pre-qualifier fight (which, coincidentally, is how the game begins).

Players start by creating their characters. There will be 4-8 pre-made characters with full progression for players' use, ideas, and also for NPC's. Also, before the initial fight, players must choose whether they play as a single party (for cooperative play), or up to two parties (for competitive play). After the initial pre-qualifying battle, players have ten weeks to travel the countryside, completing quests, trading in towns, exploring dungeons, etc. All the while they will be gaining experience, training new abilities, and gearing up for the Arena Tournament, the winning party being the winner of the game.

That being said, the story lends it self easily into future games and additional material. In the long run, it would be excellent to make a series of it, where afterwards the players continue on some larger, overarching story. Each expansion lending new mechanics, monsters, quests, items, story, etc.

I definitely agree with you, though, Laperen, about it easily becoming too complicated. The game will be designed to facilitate minimum record-keeping, so more time is spent making the fun decisions and developing the characters. You are right about the story. Video games lend themselves to immersing players into the stories, whereas board games are more social in nature and require multiple people (normally). In a setting of 3+ people, you don't want the story to be too in-depth or require too much attention, as each player will have a different level of attentiveness to the story. Some just want to get to the strategy of the combat, others want to just finish as many quests as possible, and others just want to see what items they can buy in the marketplace, others just want to win. So the story will be kept simple, fun, and accessible for possible future material. What I haven't said about the story, yet, is that the king has an ulterior motive behind the tournament. He plans to hand-select combatants to form his new, secret task force, known as The King's Legion.

That game looks really cool, and would be similar in nature to the combat I have been designing. Players will fight in environments with monsters and there will be objects, such as trees, walls, boulders, that will affect Line of Sight and range.

Anyways, hopefully I've given a good elaboration to the game and my intent (probably more than you needed, lol). I really appreciate your feedback.

Hey McTeddy

First off, thank you very much for your response. As an engineer, I'm always a skeptic and love playing devil's advocate; it's a necessary role that weeds out those who can't think outside of the box or see things in a plausible reality. I would like to address all of your comments and concerns, and am interested in your response to each.

I completely agree with you about the computers record keeping and saving gameplay well. As mentioned previously, the game will minimize record keeping by design. Where it will be necessary, it will be streamlined and simplified. This is a simply a matter of design, and after some additional playtesting (it's already started), this will be improved upon. Obviously a video game will do this better than any board game will, but who is to say a board game can't do it well.

As a board gamer, it is always tough to get players for a 4-hour game, but it does happen, and many board games are designed with that time frame of play, or longer (Twilight Imperium, Monopoly, Warhammer, and many many more). This is just a balancing issue of how long I want the game to take, and who my intended audience will be as a result. This is the choice I get to make as the game designer.

As mentioned previously, the game will minimize record keeping by design. Where it will be necessary, it will be streamlined and simplified. This is a simply a matter of design, and after some additional playtesting (it's already started), this will be improved upon. Obviously a video game will do this better than any board game will, but who is to say a board game can't do it well.

To give a little more insight on the health, stats, level ups, and equipment, these will be simple. The focus is on options and strategy, not lots of depth. The only character stats are HP and SP (spellpoints). Armor stats only include Armor, plus passive bonuses provided from magical armor. Weapon stats only include Damage, plus passive bonuses. "Leveling Up" will only be choosing a single ability, which would be a new element, a new manifestation, or some new combat ability (could be passive or active), and each character will either gain +1 HP (for combat) or +1 SP (for magic). Again, the goal is to just keep it simple. It will not be like D&D in that there are many stats or skills. At the end of the game, a character may have 4-6 abilities from training. Hopefully this helps clarify my intent.

Yes, this is a lot of material to design, but most of them are just minor differences. It will be a fair amount of balancing, but it can be done. I have an idea of how much work will be involved, and choose to go that route. It is what will help make it a quality game with tons of replay value. As I said before, the story will be simple, fun, and accessible for future growth. I agree that Board game AI is inferior to video game AI, simply because video game AI can be more complex. This means board game AI will be "dumber" (ie less strategic). This can be accounted for by making combat a little more challenging (this will take tweaking to balance, of course).

Again, I agree with you. Simpler is better. The mechanics and depth will be simple, but the volume of material will be significant. This is the spirit of the tactical RPG I am looking to create.

I'm glad you think it can be done. Of course it will be a lot of effort, but hopefully a lot of effort means the better chance for success.

The beginning will not be a tournament, but simply a pre-qualifying round, ie fight. It will simply be a fight against a couple simple enemies. This will serve to help introduce the players to combat in a non-threatening and simple way (ie, they should not lose, lol, otherwise there will just be some small penalty, such as they won't get a potion for successfully entering the tournament roster).

There will not be cooperative training, as all abilities in the game would be solely for the character using them. None of them will require another character to use. Characters will simply choose their own training.

Evasion will only be available as passive abilities, for the time being. In this game, abilities and spells automatically "hit". Armor reduces Physical Damage, and Spell-Resistance and various Elemental Resistances will reduce Magical/Elemental Damage. Where the "random chance" occurs are the attacks/spells/actions monsters take (the AI). The AI will be determined by combat dice, with the results coinciding with the monster's card.

Passive evasive abilities would be like, "Evasion (Stealth Ability): Reduce damage from Area of Effect spells by 2." or "Side-Step (Combat Ability): If an adjacent enemy attacks you, you may move one space in response. However, you are now fatigued."

Spell points are only for spells. Other types of abilities have their own trade-offs, such as the one just mentioned above.

Damage dealt would depend on the attack. A dragon's bite is going to deal more than a goblin's punch.

Hope this helps clarify a little.

Hey Radioactivemouse

Risking being shot down or explained away is the most useful path to take, because it gets at the nitty gritty and forces you to think at the detailed level. It's a necessary step.

I agree with you; it's definitely a big project and undertaking. Go big or go home has always been my motto. To skip ahead in conversation, you disagreed with my "more efforts means better success." Maybe we aren't looking at it the same way. The direction and wisdom was implicit to the ambition and project; sorry for not clarifying. As someone who has managed many construction projects, I am familiar with people spinning their wheels without knowing which direction they are going. A lot of time and efforts can be wasted that way. So part of what I was looking for, when originally starting the thread, was to get your all's judgement on the direction and wisdom of a game like this. I expected most of the answers I've received, and I appreciate hearing it from others as well.

You are definitely right about starting small and building up. That's something I have been doing. I started too big, and have gone through multiple scale-backs as the initial playtesting has started. Sure, it's an iterative process, and will be for a long while. Partially to what I meant from my "effort = success" statement, is that the more iterations and time spent, the better refined the game can be, resulting in a better game.

Not only have I played Mage Knight, but I own it. It's a fun game, with a ton of mechanics, depth, and material. That being said, I understand how tough it is to get players to play it, and have had success and failures with that. That's a result of the game design, and surely the designers knew that when they designed the game the way they did. In the same way, I'm expecting about the same from my own game. As the designer, I get to control who my target audience is. I don't expect "casual" board gamers to want to play it, nor those who want to pick up a game that is simple and takes 2 hours or less. It would be geared towards the players who want to play a 4-hour game that has a lot of depth and more-than-normal upkeep.

I really like your question of, "Are you willing to let go of some of the elements to make it easier?" That is a question that I am continually asking myself and how I want to balance depth/number of mechanics vs time of gameplay/game difficulty.

You are right, though. I need to continue to start small and build up from there. This will make playtesting and balancing the game mechanics easier, as well as keep me focused on what I like and don't like in the game.

Thank you very much again for the input.

Hey McTeddy

That's a very good point; thank you. I haven't thought about it that way. It is fluff material and not really necessary. I will either take it out, or give it another role in the game.

Thanks again! Great input.