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Game #21 The Wheel of Time by Scurra

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Wed, 03/03/2004 - 18:03
#31
jwarrend
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Game #21 The Wheel of Time by Scurra

Scurra wrote:

But the current game has too many aspects for that idea to really work; in essence it's the "free" actions that drive the game, not the Wheel actions, which have to be considered something like the Hand of Fate, rather than a tight constraint (which is what they would be if they were the only actions on offer.)

But you are, within that restriction, free to choose the actions you wish to choose. Consider New England, for example -- the actions are restricted, but because you're bidding for which actions you want, if you don't get to take those actions, it's explicable in terms of bidding.

I don't dispute your analysis at all, and if you say it wouldn't work with one action, I'm sure you're right. I'm simply saying that there's no "Hand of Fate" here -- players choose their actions based on their bids, so you have to bid based on how much you care about which action you choose. And since I assume that all players will want to take all of the actions at some point or another, losing the bid and being "forced" to take a given action may not be a bad thing even a majority of the time.

Obviously, you should go with what works best, just seems like it could streamline the game a bit, but there are no doubt other, "less painful" ways to do that...

-J

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Wed, 03/03/2004 - 20:03
#32
Deviant
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Game #21 The Wheel of Time by Scurra

I'm not opposed to bidding mechanisms per se, but I wonder if the constant bidding wouldn't get old after a while.

Here's a simple idea: Starting with the lead player and moving down, players take turns selecting actions. They move to the next space with that action and perform it. Once an action has been taken, it can not be selected by any other player until the next round. I've never played, but I believe Puerto Rico does something like this.

The first player has an advantage in that he may select any action, while players who fall behind are more restricted. But desperate players at the back of the pack can recover at some cost by selecting negative actions, which are spaced farther apart and so allow faster movement.

I guess this would change the feel of your game pretty fundamentally, but it would be easy enough to implement, would speed up gameplay, and is just as rich a system in its own way.

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Wed, 03/03/2004 - 20:09
#33
Scurra
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Game #21 The Wheel of Time by Scurra

jwarrend wrote:

I don't dispute your analysis at all, and if you say it wouldn't work with one action, I'm sure you're right. I'm simply saying that there's no "Hand of Fate" here -- players choose their actions based on their bids, so you have to bid based on how much you care about which action you choose. And since I assume that all players will want to take all of the actions at some point or another, losing the bid and being "forced" to take a given action may not be a bad thing even a majority of the time.

Well there's the turn order aspect to consider as well - that's what I think makes the Wheel more interesting than, say, a random card dealt to a player to determine which "forced" action they take. (Indeed, it is quite similar to the New England system now you come to mention it, albeit without the seating order issues.)

All I'm saying is that the current design makes the Wheel a minor component of the game - in essence, the seat order mechanism - when it should be the centrepiece. Restricting the player to a single action from the Wheel would make that possible, but I don't think it works in this game. OTOH I've already started making some notes about how it might work in a completely different game :)

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Wed, 03/03/2004 - 20:24
#34
Scurra
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Game #21 The Wheel of Time by Scurra

Deviant wrote:
I'm not opposed to bidding mechanisms per se, but I wonder if the constant bidding wouldn't get old after a while.

That's probably true. The game is a bit long for this sort of repetitive mechanic.

Deviant wrote:

Here's a simple idea: Starting with the lead player and moving down, players take turns selecting actions. They move to the next space with that action and perform it. Once an action has been taken, it can not be selected by any other player until the next round. I've never played, but I believe Puerto Rico does something like this.

I'm trying to visualise how this would work. I can see what you're getting at, but I think it can be made smoother still. It means leaving the player markers on the Wheel (so you can see the player order for the next round of selections) but that's fairly minor. In essence, your choice of actions is restricted by where you were in the last round.

Here's a quick stab at my version. If we have players A,B,C and D and their markers are on the Wheel in that order. Then at the start of the next round, the adjustment markers are placed as before, but player D gets first choice of actions (as they were furthest round the Wheel, and hence played last in the round.) Now they could choose the action furthest round the Wheel again (to ensure first pick on the following round) but it might not be one they want to take. So imagine they take action #2 instead. Then player C chooses, then player B and finally player A. But this time, the markers end up in the order B,D,C,A. So on the next round, the action choice order is A,C,D,B and so on.

And the only bidding round would be the first one, to determine placing order at the start.

It's not what you're suggesting, but it does away with countless auctions!

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Wed, 03/03/2004 - 23:23
#35
Deviant
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Game #21 The Wheel of Time by Scurra

Scurra wrote:
It's not what you're suggesting, but it does away with countless auctions!

If I understand this right, the only differences between your version and mine is that turn order is reversed (the player in the back goes first), and choices are never restricted (everyone can choose War!, for instance).

Which is fine. I actually thought about flipping the turn order to the way you have now. On the one hand, my system encourages racing ahead to secure an advantage. On the other, it may lead to a runaway leader problem. Cutthroat competition at the expense of some balance. Your way may be best, although it's worth playtesting both ways.

If moves aren't restricted in some way by the lead (or trailing) players, is there even a reason for turn order? There is no inherent advantage to going first. I guess the players in the back are penalized somewhat by having spaces ahead of them being filled by other players (only one player per space, right?), but otherwise the only strategy is optimization, and not working competitively to screw over the other players.

Correct me if I'm wrong somewhere. I'm not sure I get what you're saying.

EDIT: Nice trophy, btw. :wink:

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Thu, 03/04/2004 - 06:56
#36
Scurra
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Game #21 The Wheel of Time by Scurra

Deviant wrote:

If I understand this right, the only differences between your version and mine is that turn order is reversed (the player in the back goes first), and choices are never restricted (everyone can choose War!, for instance).
[...]
Correct me if I'm wrong somewhere. I'm not sure I get what you're saying.

What I'm saying is that the adjustment markers are still used, so that only a limited subset of the actions are available - the next ones round the Wheel. Not that you can move on to any unoccupied action; you can only move to marked unoccupied actions. Otherwise you might as well not have the Wheel at all!

And this way going first in a round means that you will get no choice in the next round which should help to rebalance it a little (under the old system, you could bid to get first pick to (almost!) ensure that you got some VPs back which made up for the bid.)

But I can see what you're getting at, and both ways look worth trying.

EDIT: This does lose the "random leap-forward" effect introduced by the bidding, which needs replacing in some form or another, otherwise the game will be the same every time! Perhaps the last player to place could move the Start of Round marker on a number of spaces of their choice (up to a set maximum)? That would at least give them a bit of control of the selection of actions in the next round, when they get first pick.

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Thu, 03/04/2004 - 13:42
#37
ensor
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Game #21 The Wheel of Time by Scurra

The games I play tend to be light and middle fare; I haven't spent 3 hours on a game since Axis and Allies with my brother in junior high. Your Wheel of Time makes less sense to me than someone experienced in these games, so I don't have much to offer in the way of mechanics, more in the understanding of the rules.

I like the ideas behind your world, like the forced negative actions, and increase in speed as the game progresses. The random deal of god powers should make for a variable experience each time as players try to work with (or against) their specialties.

I've been trying to read through the rules off and on this week, and for me, this page on how the bidding works, http://www.scurra.com/wheel/example.htm, made the most sense. It's very clear and I could follow along with the example setup. The outline you provide in the HTML version captures alot of the dynamics of the game, like turn within round within epoch, in a great visual hierarchy that I can wrap my head around. It also helped clear up my confusion about +ve and -ve as standing for positive and negative.

I can see who has to do which action and how the turn will look next round, but I'm still confused about what exactly the actions do. Maybe there could be a summary page or diagram showing what actions influence what pieces on the board; they seem very intertwined with far-reaching effects, and this would help players when making their bidding decisions.

Good luck with the game; from the comments here, it looks like the pieces are falling into place.

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Sat, 03/06/2004 - 12:30
#38
Scurra
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Thanks and lessons...

As I'm coming to the end of my slot, may I say thank-you to the people who ploughed their way through a (complicated) rule-set and provided interesting feedback on an overly ambitious idea.

I am certainly enjoying the development process with this one, even though I suspect that it eventually will go on to the pile of "nice idea but..." games, ready for ransacking when I need some mechanics for another design (indeed, the "one action only from the Wheel" game is already taking a vague shape :))

I may see if I can persuade my testers to give it another run out with a number of the ideas proposed here incorporated, and an even more abstracted War mechanic implemented.

But the real lesson seems to be that this game was perhaps a little too far past the practical limits for what can be usefully reviewed within the confines of the GDW. Not that I don't think others shouldn't submit anything so big in the future, but the preparatory work was huge and I still didn't get everything that was necessary completed, let alone enough supporting material to make it properly comprehensible...

Next time I'll stick to the twenty-minute card game format ;)

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Sun, 03/07/2004 - 06:48
#39
Sebastian
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Joined: 07/27/2008
Game #21 The Wheel of Time by Scurra

Scurra wrote:

Here's a quick stab at my version. If we have players A,B,C and D and their markers are on the Wheel in that order. Then at the start of the next round, the adjustment markers are placed as before, but player D gets first choice of actions (as they were furthest round the Wheel, and hence played last in the round.) Now they could choose the action furthest round the Wheel again (to ensure first pick on the following round) but it might not be one they want to take. So imagine they take action #2 instead. Then player C chooses, then player B and finally player A. But this time, the markers end up in the order B,D,C,A. So on the next round, the action choice order is A,C,D,B and so on.

I would suggest that you place the a 'start choice from here' marker on the furthest player round. Play proceeds as described above, except players can move as far around the wheel as they like. However, they have to pay some appropriate number of VPs for each empty square beyond the 'start choice from here' marker that they move across. With appropriate escalation of cost, this would stop people moving too far, but still add extra choice.

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Sun, 03/07/2004 - 08:58
#40
Scurra
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Game #21 The Wheel of Time by Scurra

Sebastian wrote:

I would suggest that you place the a 'start choice from here' marker on the furthest player round. Play proceeds as described above, except players can move as far around the wheel as they like. However, they have to pay some appropriate number of VPs for each empty square beyond the 'start choice from here' marker that they move across. With appropriate escalation of cost, this would stop people moving too far, but still add extra choice.

If I didn't have the positive and negative adjustment markers this would be a very nice mechanic. But part of the game is the limitation of choice based upon those markers - that you have to accept what is on offer, and sometimes it's not a great option...

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Sun, 03/07/2004 - 11:56
#41
jwarrend
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Re: Thanks and lessons...

Scurra wrote:

But the real lesson seems to be that this game was perhaps a little too far past the practical limits for what can be usefully reviewed within the confines of the GDW. Not that I don't think others shouldn't submit anything so big in the future, but the preparatory work was huge and I still didn't get everything that was necessary completed, let alone enough supporting material to make it properly comprehensible...

Next time I'll stick to the twenty-minute card game format ;)

I think this is something I've anticipated from the beginning, and have tried to be up front with people about. Moving to one week slots makes complex games much harder as GDW entries. I'm sure there were a few people who just couldn't invest the time to understand the game enough to make useful comments, and that's a shame. But, this was true of IngredientX and Brykovian's entry, and yet both came away feeling that they got a lot out of their sessions. I hope you feel the same way.

So again, to all, you're welcome to put up whatever game you want in the GDW, but the more complex, or the more polished, the game is, the less benefit you'll get from the GDW.

I wouldn't be opposed to occasionally having 2 week sessions for longer, more complex games; since many of us are working on such games, discussing complicated games is a valid use of the GDW. Let's see how the schedule shakes out, but if we end up with a lot of holes we could offer 2 week slots if people have more involved games they'd like to discuss. Just a thought.

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