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Game story for review

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Shrike
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Joined: 08/26/2010

Hey folks, I was wondering if you would read the following and let me know what you think. It is the first draft of a set up story for a combat based board game where the players play (on their turn) a Squad of Marines(3) fighting Vampires and Werewolves (up to 6 per board, always played by the player to the Marine's left) I'm in the middle of a big smoothing out of the rule book at the moment and if there is interest will post it when I'm done. Here is the set up story though, tell me what you think.

Night Fight

2035, after centuries of thinking them to be nothing more than myth, they emerged. Vampires, Werewolves, there was nothing better to call them. For the first few months we couldn’t even figure out where they were coming from. After the third raid on New York City our intel finally found an entrance to one of their underground caverns, some of them as big as the human cities that were above them. We’ve located dozens now, how long have they been there, how did we miss these things below us, and worse, why are they coming after us now? They don’t seem to want anything from us, except to use us as food, they don’t take prisoners that we can tell, at least we’ve never had to face one of our own on the other side.

Some of the initial counter attacks went bad, real bad. We severely underestimated their numbers and capabilities. Whole Brigades, four Squads strong, were lost to the first Masters that the Marines ran into. The new Mozu and Taka battle armors we got from our allies in Tokyo went into the development fast track after that. The Brasses’ paranoia of our weapons falling into the wrong hands finally paid off though, if it wasn’t for the electronic keying systems placed in the weapons those “things” might be able to use our own tech against us. That is a nightmare we don’t need.

Rumor is the next mission is to be a doozey, two to four squads going into one of the smaller hives. Intel seems to think they’ve located a possible leader, as if the Masters weren’t bad enough, god help us if we find it , we’re going to need it. Semper Fi.

Questions, comments? Thanks.

SteelShark
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Game story for review

Concept: I think it's a good setup, and I really like the narrative method. However, the language seems to be half way between a rules writer and a marine. I would jump the dialogue all the way into the "marine speak". If you need to clarify something about game mechanics, you can do that in the rules.

Text: Couple of grammatical errors such as run on sentences, so you might want to take a look at it in MS Word with grammar check on.

Mood: I think you need to make this more desparate, grittier, and more on edge. Right now it feels as if this is all part of the job for the marine. If you bring out the emotion (more on the lost comrades, feeling of failure to control the situation, etc.) you can make it more of a mandate that the player gets in there and helps out the situation.

You could turn this into a sergeant briefing some new squad recruits. That would help cover some of the history, and also directly task the players into action.

Just some thoughts.

Shrike
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Joined: 08/26/2010
Game story for review

Thanks for the look. I see what you mean about half and half, I guess I got to overdone about describing why the Monsters couldn't use the weapons and such. I'll have to run the spell/gram ck again, thought I had gotten before I posted it here, oh well. I think I'll try a couple different versions, I like the gritteir idea mixed w/ the "new recruit" thing. Thanks for the outside perspective.

jkopena
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Game story for review

Shrike, 3 quick comments:

- There are a couple run on sentences there.

- There's an inconsistency between the one statement that "whole brigades, four squads strong" were lost against masters, followed by "this mission's going to be a real doozey, 2 to four squads" against a leader. Compared to the earlier, it's actually a smaller mission unit-wise, but against a presumably tougher target.

- You could maybe drop the opening date and just frame the time period with something like "Centuries after the age of fairy-tale, they re-emerged" or "As the great cities continued to decline, they came. Werewolves, vampyres, all our fears, now centuries old."

But, marines fighting vampires should be cool. I'm curious to hear more about your control scheme (vampires to the left, etc).

Shrike
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Joined: 08/26/2010
Game story for review

Thanks for the thoughts, this week I'm going to try to redo it a bit. As soon as I figure out why the site won't let me access the "my downloads" section (after it let me put the rule book in there) I'll post it for folks to look at. Been solo playing the game a little this weekend and found some goofs, but nothing major, hope to let folks tear it up soon! ^_^ Thanks guys

dete
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Game story for review

Being a HUGE vampire fan,

I LIKE it!
your writing style is nice.
I agree with the above guys, but I think
you can have 2 narrators.

The 1st one describing the scenario like Sarah Conor in Terminator.
A grim woman's voice is what I hear, also like in the movie
DUNE with the Princess doing the naration.

The 2nd part of your story can be told by a hard core marine.

Shrike
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Joined: 08/26/2010
Game story for review

Thanks for the look. I'll be trying to post the whole rule book and some looks at the game (cards/map tiles/character stand ups) this weekend, I have MOST of the big bugs worked out, but need some advice on other stuff that I'm hoping the folks here can help with. I'm a big vamp fan too, that was why I was SOOO mad at Underworld, that movie could have been so cool, then they made the vamps into wimps... although Ms. Beckinsale made up for alot......

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