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Random board layout for a full-coop game

8 replies [Last post]
Fri, 01/21/2005 - 14:03
Anonymous

Hello all,

I'm currently working on a full-cooperative game, where all players walk together toward a common goal (well, maybe I'll include personal, hidden objectives, but that's to see later). All will happen in a futuristic setting (think Aliens - the movie), inside an infested ship/base.

To create a kind of suspense and fear of the unknown, I want the board to be randomly designed, probably during the game play. I think of using 7x7-square game tiles, with openings or not on each side. It's kind of similar to the Zombies! board game, but the tiles would be placed when a player or a squad (a group of players) passes by a "door", and not automatically each turn as it is the case in Zombies! That will oblige the players to advance, and not wait for the "goal" tile to appear magically just near them.

With this "feature", players will feel like their characters: they don't know exactly how the ship/base is built, and they certainly don't know what happened in the rooms they will visit. This will also add some replay value, as the board will not be the same for each game.

The point is, some missions will be "Evac"; that is, the players must evacuate the building alive via a special tile. Some other missions will ask for the players to find some object, or to reach a specific room. Knowing this, it is very important that all rooms must be placed, and no total dead-end (closed board) must happen. And that's where I am right now: how could it be done?

Here are some ideas, tell me if you think of other ones (as I'm certainly not satisfied with the ones I got):

- Ensure each tile has at least 3 openings. It would be impossible to "close" the board this way.

- Allow the players to "create a door" (bombing a wall, using ventilation ducts, etc.). This could solve the problem, but would be the criteria to allow them to create such a door? When there's a total dead-end? Or maybe giving them some kind of malus for doing this? Because we certainly don't want the players to create doors everywhere!

- When the board is closed, a tile could be drawn and placed over an already placed tile, to "open" back the board. But how that could logically happen?

- When drawing a tile, if placing it could only lead to a closed board, the players draw a new tile until they get one that does not close the board (except if it's the last tile, naturally!). However, there's still the possibility that no remaining tile will let the board open.

I'm sure someone can think of something better!

Thanks!

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Fri, 01/21/2005 - 14:35
#1
OrlandoPat
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Joined: 10/16/2008
I like the idea

I like the "keep drawing until you get a tile that works" idea.

Be careful with the "players can make their own doorways" idea. That could reduce the significance of the random terrain. For example, if I end up with a tile that forces me (or someone else) to turn around... well, that has significance to the gameplay. If the players can blast through walls, that element would be lost.

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Fri, 01/21/2005 - 15:55
#2
phpbbadmin
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Joined: 04/23/2013
Random board layout for a full-coop game

I agree with Pat. You could possibly make it a tiny bit more elegant by putting a tiny little symbol on the back of each tile with more than one exit out of the tile. So you could shuffle the tiles randomnly and then draw one of these tiles with the special symbol and set it aside. So each time you would get a tile you would draw it randomly from the pile UNLESS there is a situation where the is only one exit from all of the available existing tiles. In that case you would take the face down tile with special symbol that you set aside earlier and play that tile instead. Now you would search for another tile with the symbol to replace it and set that symboled tile aside.

It's not a perfect solution but it is pretty elegant.
-Darke

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Fri, 01/21/2005 - 17:19
#3
Anonymous
Re: I like the idea

OrlandoPat wrote:
Be careful with the "players can make their own doorways" idea. That could reduce the significance of the random terrain. For example, if I end up with a tile that forces me (or someone else) to turn around... well, that has significance to the gameplay. If the players can blast through walls, that element would be lost.

There is a possible solution to this - make the mechanism used by the players to blast their own door a limited thing - one per player or somesuch (or based on the game, only available if a certain type of character is taken, like a demolition guy). This makes them more valuable and more likely to be used with some thought instead of mindlessly blowing through anything in the way.

Another thought is to have some of the tiles to be placed contain explosives, so that detonating into a room like that would cause a backlash on the players nearby the explosion.

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Fri, 01/21/2005 - 23:22
#4
Anonymous
Random board layout for a full-coop game

I think the random board is very possible even with the special item collection feature. I came up with something very similar for a game of my own in the past; here's how you could do it:

Make your different board tiles with their 7x7 spaces each, and they each have different paths, hazards, etc. to make them distinct and to make a different playing experience each time. The first key is to make gateway spaces (that go from one tile to the next) in consistent places on all the tiles. The second key is to avoid making each tile with the same exit gateways as all the others.

Lemme clarify that. Say that each tile has three possible exits, one on the North side, on the South side, and one on the East side. Now imagine that all the exits are on the Eastern half of the tile. Also imagine that each tile always has three entrances, in the North, South, and West, and that these gateway spaces are all on the Western half of the tile.

When a player wants to use the Eastern exit, that's obvious where the tile goes. With the other two exits, he would place the new tile staggered 50% on the horizontal dimension so that the exit on the first matched up with the entrance on the second.

The idea here is to make a general Eastward flow of the game. That way you know where to put the starting tile on your table (of finite space). This could also be adapted to aim the flow of the game in any direction, or remove all aim entirely (if you do that, you had better play this game on a big table).

You could just have a Special Space or two on each tile where you could place a card with the special item on it, or something else depending on where the tile was placed, using a degree system. E.g. "Place the Injured Colonist card on the Special Item Space on the first 3rd Degree Tile" that is, the tile after the tile after the tile after the start (after you have placed 3 tiles, the 3rd tile out holds the guy you need to rescue).

You could set up these placement conditions based on mission cards or something similar drawn randomly. If there was no direction to place anything on that Special Space, then it would function as a normal, empty space.

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Sat, 01/22/2005 - 12:58
#5
Anonymous
Random board layout for a full-coop game

Quote:
Ensure each tile has at least 3 openings. It would be impossible to "close" the board this way.

I think that the problem could be faced from a matematical point of view. I mean, is there a minimum percentage of 3-opening tiles ensuring that the board is not going to get "closed"?

I don't know if this can be demonstrated, but I think that if you have an openings/tiles ratio high enough, the probability of getting "closed" could be very small, having tiles with different numbers of openings, instead of a constant 3 openings/tile. Sadly, I'm not sure about that, so, is there any matematician here that can demonstrate it?

Anyway, I would preffer a bomb-like solution to "closed" boards, instead of sellecting the tile to draw to avoid the situation.

Roberto, from Spain

P.S. Excuse my mediocre english, I needed more than thirty minutes to write this :P

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Sat, 01/22/2005 - 13:10
#6
Anonymous
Random board layout for a full-coop game

roberto wrote:
I don't know if this can be demonstrated, but I think that if you have an openings/tiles ratio high enough, the probability of getting "closed" could be very small, having tiles with different numbers of openings, instead of a constant 3 openings/tile. Sadly, I'm not sure about that, so, is there any matematician here that can demonstrate it?

Anyway, I would preffer a bomb-like solution to "closed" boards, instead of sellecting the tile to draw to avoid the situation.

It might do good to take a look at Goldland's system. Basically, it demonstrates that as long as there is some way of overcoming a wall that is blocking your way, the game plays well. In fact, those walls could be used to people's advantage. It brings up the possibility of a competitive game (or a Burke-like character -- see Aliens) to blow through a wall, then seal it up or trap it behind you. That'd be cool. ;-)

roberto wrote:
P.S. Excuse my mediocre english, I needed more than thirty minutes to write this :P

That was a well-spent half hour, then. Your English is quite good! I can't imagine how long it would have taken me to express this same thought in German, and I was once fairly fluent in German.

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Mon, 01/24/2005 - 06:50
#7
Johan
Johan's picture
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Joined: 10/05/2008
Random board layout for a full-coop game

Hi

One way is to give the players a lot of options (ventilation, hidden passage, using mega blasts inside the ship. You can also letting them doing some spacewalk outside the ship) but everything is done with a risk. One risk can be that they can end up in space (without any equipment for that), another that the room collapse. There are a lot of possibilities.

// Johan

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Mon, 01/24/2005 - 21:48
#8
Anonymous
Thanks for your contributions

Wow, thanks for your ideas! I read them a couple of times, thought about it, and I think we might have something here. :)

OrlandoPat wrote:
I like the "keep drawing until you get a tile that works" idea.

That could be a good idea, but there are two problems. Ok, the first one's quite minor: the players would have a preview of the upcoming rooms. Second - and that where it's really problematic - it is still possible that no tile would allow the board not to be closed. And I really want to avoid such a situation. So, this idea alone cannot solve the problem, but...

Darkehorse wrote:
You could possibly make it a tiny bit more elegant by putting a tiny little symbol on the back of each tile with more than one exit out of the tile. So you could shuffle the tiles randomnly and then draw one of these tiles with the special symbol and set it aside. So each time you would get a tile you would draw it randomly from the pile UNLESS there is a situation where the is only one exit from all of the available existing tiles. In that case you would take the face down tile with special symbol that you set aside earlier and play that tile instead. Now you would search for another tile with the symbol to replace it and set that symboled tile aside.

That could certainly avoid the player to get a preview of the upcoming tiles when searching for an adequate one when needed. I'm not sure about the idea of putting a multi-opened tile aside, since the game will probably use a lot of components, so I want to avoid putting this one more. However, putting that special tile at the end of the draw pack would achieve the same objective, so... that's great!

screechwithgrace wrote:
Lemme clarify that. Say that each tile has three possible exits, one on the North side, on the South side, and one on the East side. Now imagine that all the exits are on the Eastern half of the tile. Also imagine that each tile always has three entrances, in the North, South, and West, and that these gateway spaces are all on the Western half of the tile.

Well, if I understand well, each tile would need... 6 openings? I'm not too sure I followed you on this one, sorry. Also, by forcing an entrance/exit system, it would make the game more linear, and that's not what I'm looking for in that case. I'm aiming more at exploration, and possible backtracking. This way, a player or a squad could say "OK, this way's too dangerous, we'll try another one", and go back to previously visited tiles.

screechwithgrace wrote:
You could just have a Special Space or two on each tile where you could place a card with the special item on it, or something else depending on where the tile was placed, using a degree system. E.g. "Place the Injured Colonist card on the Special Item Space on the first 3rd Degree Tile" that is, the tile after the tile after the tile after the start (after you have placed 3 tiles, the 3rd tile out holds the guy you need to rescue).

I was already going with a "card with a special item on it"-type thing, where each room would get a "?" marker. The first time a player or a squad enters the room, the "?" marker is processed (with some sort of cross-table, or something like that), and then removed from the board. But here, I really like your degree system. That would allow to create more stable missions, where some things are not completely driven by randomness. That could be necessary, especially for "time-limited" (well, more like "turn-limited") games. That will definitly end up in the mission-design specs, thanks.

theicemage wrote:
In fact, those walls could be used to people's advantage. It brings up the possibility of a competitive game (or a Burke-like character -- see Aliens) to blow through a wall, then seal it up or trap it behind you. That'd be cool. ;-)

Yop, I thought of this kind of "competitive" gameplay. I'd probably introduce some "personal goal" cards, where each player would get a secret mission. Most player should be aiming towards the "common goal", but a player or two could be the bad guys. Since these cards remain hidden, this could add an interesting twist to the gameplay, where those bad guys must remain silent until a good occasion is presented to them... or panic when there's not much time left before their goals become unreachable.

Johan wrote:
One way is to give the players a lot of options (ventilation, hidden passage, using mega blasts inside the ship. You can also letting them doing some spacewalk outside the ship) but everything is done with a risk. One risk can be that they can end up in space (without any equipment for that), another that the room collapse. There are a lot of possibilities.

I really like that one, seriously. Giving a lot of options will ensure there would be no real dead-end. Also, players may be tempted to use shortcuts, especially if their time is limited or they really don't want to go back it that room with that creepy uber-blob thing, but each attempt is risky, and may split the team, or slow them down even more, or... Yes, I think we got something here.

All in all, I think I'd go with the "draw until it's OK option", probably with the Darkehorse back-of-the-card pictogram option, to minimize the risk of total dead-ends. Since it does not completely exclude all possibilities of closed board, I would probably implement some possible actions that players may use if necessary... or even if not, but always at a risk, or with some kind of disadvantage:

  • Ventilation: The player could pass "through" a wall, but only one player can pass each turn, and the first player to get into the other room must face the hazards of that room alone, until his allies come with him... and the last one to pass will also have to deal a turn alone in a possibly not-so-friendly room.

  • Mega blast: That could be done by some classes of character, providing they get the correct equipment for this. This could also lead to injuries, or even a completly destroyed room. However, a successful attempt would create a permanent door... But both the risk and the cost are heavy.

  • Spacewalk: Not quite sure on how to implement this one, but I really like the idea of having someone alone outside, and all. I'll think about it.

    • Again, thanks a lot for your contributions. I really was stuck in a dead-end here (hehe, sorry, couldn't pass that one ;) ), but I think I now got enough material to proceed. Anyway, if anyone has another suggestion, there's still a lot to be done before the design is completed, so I'm still open.

    - Simon

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