WarLord

Sounds like a cool game, but I tend to shy away from creating games that eliminate players. To me there is nothing worse than sitting around watching for the conclusion of a game. The theme aspect of this may help it though. On the flipside, war is war and that is how it is. Once you are dead there is no coming back... Like I said, sounds like a cool game. It is great getting caught up in the excitement of creating a game. It encompasses your every thought at times.

Oh, a tape measure! I can already see rules lawyers wet their pants! :twisted:

Is the sky the limit?

One thing that might be cool is to have a plexiglass "lid" that sits on four feet, and which can rest 6" above the surface of the game. Then, for each weapon, you have a clear plastic square, with a circle drawn whose radius corresponds to the range of that weapon. You then look down from above, place the weapon disk over the character who's going to use the weapon, and then see if he can hit his target.

Or, the cool thing might be to have each character pawn situated in a rotating base, and having a small diode laser pointing out of the top of the character's head, down at the board, with the beam striking the board at the maximum distance the given weapon can strike (maybe the diode laser can even pivot, and the "range" of the weapon is characterized by the angle at which the laser should be pointing at the surface).

These sound pretty absurd, but perhaps they reveal the difficulties inherent to simulation-oriented game design. This is why I personally try not to design simulations nor do I play them. I just don't think the enormous complexity associated with charts, lookup tables, ranges, modifiers, etc, really does all that much for me; it just adds length and complexity, but sort of makes me feel more like a bookkeeper than a general.

I don't know. There's clearly a huge number of people who your game will appeal to, I happen not to be one of them, but no doubt your game will do well if you can somehow distinguish it from the existing tabletop games out there.

My advice, if I had any, would be, I guess, to come up with something that's truly unique compared to the other games. Don't just have a different theme, or a different set of stats you're keeping track of. Use the stats in a whole different way. Or better yet, abandon stats altogether and make the gameplay more about making challenging decisions and balancing risky strategies than about comparing stats and chart lookups.

Just my vague and fairly biased opinion. Good luck with your project!

-Jeff

On the contrary, I think it's the stats that make wargames complicated in the first place. They emphasize simulation over simplicity, and that's fine, but to me, they don't hold any attraction.

What I think my point was, more, was that your game has elements that are common to all wargames; check for range, roll to see if you hit, roll for damage, compare modifiers, etc. And the point is, if the game that you want to play already exists, why bother going to the effort of designing?

What I guess I'm getting at is that what I think would give your game a real shot in the arm is to come up with some mechanic that very clearly distinguishes it from the other tabletop games that already exist.

The first thing you need to figure out is the experience you want the game to provide the players. For example, should they be agonizing over things like "should I shoot an arrow at him, since he's further away, or should I try to charge him with my sword before he can reload his crossbow?"

It's decisions that make a game fun and interesting, and I think that a lot of stats like range, to hit roll, etc, don't necessarily make for more interesting decisions. Are there ways, other than giving people and weapons and items a bunch of different numbers, that you can evoke the same *experience*?

For example, maybe there are three draw decks, one for each of 3 possible weapons a character could use, and prior to the battle, each player "studies" the weapons by drawing cards he can use in the actual battle. Then, when the battle happens, he performs combat by playing the cards in some way. Maybe, for example, the "sword" cards give a list of "forms" that a player could place himself in, and being able to put together a better string of forms would likely give you a better chance for a hit; in that way, the game might be about set collection as much as combat.

I don't know, that's off the top of my head and not a very good idea. But the point I'm trying to get at is that you'll have no trouble making a fun and likely profitable wargame using the approach you're currently taking, but I personally think it would be more interesting to create a wargame that works with a different mechanism than comparing stats and rolling dice and comparing them to lookup charts. Or at least, to come up with something within that framework that clearly distinguishes your system from other existing games.

Just my thoughts...

-Jeff

This is an excellent point; there's no sense trying to be original until you've become pretty adept at being "un-original". Better to design the game that occurs to your intuition and strikes you as sounding fun than to try so hard to be original that you never learn how to make a working game system from start to finish. But I do think learning a lot about other games is really an important step in any design effort, at some stage; certainly prior to selling, but maybe not in the stages you're currently in.

Again, best of luck!

-Jeff

It certainly starts to look like something! I personally think 20 action points might be a bit too much. The human brain is not very good at crunching numbers higher than 10 (at least not without a bit of effort), so I suggest to keep the action point pool around 7 or so.

What if you call the action points "energy points" and the number of energy points you get at the beginning of your turn depends on the amount of "energy centers" you control on the board? Now suddenly, you have created something actually worth fighting over, instead of just hacking up the other players units.

What if the actions you can do are not freeform, but dictated by what cards you have in hand? Of course, playing certain cards will cost an amount of "energy points". Or better yet, a mix of freeform actions and cardriven actions. For example, moving a unit one space just costs 1 energy points, but if you play the card "Speed Boost" a unit may move 2 spaces for each energy point spend. If you print numbers on the cards you can also use them for combat resolution. Suddenly you have created a tension between wanting to keep a high numbered card for combat or using it for its special action.

What if the game not ends when you have defeated all of your opponent's units are defeated, but rather when the drawpile has been exhausted (for example) and players get points for certain accomplishments, say 1 point for each defeated unit, 3 points for each "keypoint" you occupy, etc. Now you have created a nice tension between wanting to occupy "energy centers" early and valuable "keypoints" later on. It will probably important to decide when to shift from going for "energy centers" to going for "keypoints".

Now, even these ideas are not very original, but I think they are much more workable than the whole stats/charts/dice rolls thing that has been done to dead and it's probably much easier to come up with an original twist to it. My advice is to keep it as simple as possible at first and then refine and enrich the design form there.

I agree with one of the previous posters that it's not really important that your first game needs to be original. It's a good idea to just get your hands dirty and simply start somewhere and see how it goes. But I don't think a wargame is a good idea for a first game. It may take an extremely long time to create a prototype and a working ruleset. It is quite likely that the endresult is something unsatisfying and that the designer becomes discouraged with designing games. I think it is better to start with a somewhat simpler design and go from there. If such a design fails, then at least you haven't wasted so much time and it is probably easier to fix or just give up and start on a better idea.

You do not have to use cards. It is just that cards can be used to limit a player's options, streamlining the game and make it go faster. Exhausting a draw pile gives you (as a designer) also a way to control the game length.

I don't think it is a good idea to be able to destroy energy centers. Rather, they are neutral buildings that give energy points to whomever controls them (has a unit on the same space for example) at the start of their turn. This way players would want to fight for control over these centers.

I also think that energy centers should not be worth any victory points, instead you want other stuff that is worth victory points. For example, if you control a village, you score points at the end, but occupying a village doesn't give you any energy points. By separating stuff that gives you energy points and stuff that gives you victory points, you create some nice tension. Should a player go for victory points or for more energy points? How important is it to defend your energy centers and villages? These kind of decisions make a game fun.

The victory condition for the game could be to control all the "villages" or "energy Centers" or whatever. Probably best to make it seperate from the Energy centers, actually, as has been mentioned.

So you need to control energy centers to do stuff, and you want to control Villages to win, but you have a finite number of guys...