Game #22 Flatball (The Ultimate Frisbee Board Game)

The Ultimate Board Game... nice. 8) I remember Ultimate from HS and College; this looks like a cool concept.

I see this as a game where simultaneous actions could be used (two players diving to catch the pass, offensive throw versus a block) to great effect; right now everything looks sequential, one action after the other, which definately gives the defense time to react. Depending on how big the board is, I agree with MikeDew that this could really slow down the game. What if the offense selected a player, and if defense has an adjacent player, they have to show their actions simultaneously? This might give the offense a possibility of faking out your defenseman and leave you more open to a catch. If there's no adjacent defensive player, they can move whomever they want.

I like the pressure of the stall count; i think it really will translate well from the field to the board game.

I'm a little confused about where players can and can't move... Can two or more players be in the same hex, or is it one player per hex? What is there to prevent me on offence from having two high-quality players just walk down the field passing as they each take one step?

What is the ordering on who can attempt catches; maybe defense gets first shot to block? It would be nice to see an example of a throw and a catch, say player 1 throws, modifiers equal 4, rolls a 3, so it's up in the air with no scatter, defense is in the path, they roll and miss, offense there too, roll and catch, etc.

I like the addition of the card modifications as another way to introduce some variability and suprize in the gameplay. Any ideas on the time-length or how many points the game should go to?

Good luck!

Mark

As usual, I haven't followed the discussion, so some of this may be redundant.

I think sports games present an interesting challenge; trying to design something that captures the "feel" of a fast-paced game in a playable, non-real-time game, is difficult. Some sports, like football or baseball, are easier in some sense because they have natural "freeze points" -- the pitch, or the down. Games like hockey, basketball, or ultimate are tougher because the action is more non-stop. But what I think you've hit on is two features that make ultimate amenable to modeling. One is that the player can't run with the frisbee, thus, there is a "freeze point" in some sense. And two, unlike hockey, the frisbee when thrown (at least over a long distance) moves slower than the players do, thus it can be "run down". ( I don't think your game has this slow-down effect as the frisbee reaches the end of its flight, but no matter).

I think you've done a nice job of balancing the fast-paced feel of the game with the allowance for "exciting" things to happen. I worry a bit that there will be a tit-for-tat effect; that if each player gets to move one guy, then the other moves a guy, and so on, that it might just be that every open "receiver" will just be marked perfectly no matter what move he makes; that the real-life effect of "breaking loose" from the defender will be tough to model (except maybe with cards). This of course assumes that the stall count starts with "perfect coverage" which presumably won't be the case all too often; when I've played, things change quickly enough that it's not at all uncommon to find the defense out of position.

I worry a little about the complexity associated with throwing, but it's probably necessary to prevent the game from being entirely positional. If there was some way to streamline the scatter effect, though, to get it down to one die roll, that might be good, but if it can be done quickly enough it should be ok as is. A "huck" is a "hail mary", right? * Maybe there should be some kind of "slow down" effect toward the end of its flight; maybe it's too complex, but it's kind of what makes that kind of a pass interesting; it can cover long distances, but it is very much "up for grabs" towards the end. But maybe just the scatter inherent to the throw adequately captures the difficulty of "hitting a specific target".

I worry a little about player-specific modifiers, just because of the back-and-forth checking that it will require. Though it wouldn't be as "pretty" as plastic miniatures of ultimate players, maybe making this a "chit-based" game and having the players' stats printed right on the chit would simplify that process. I think the old Avalon Hill sports games worked this way.

I like the simple effect that defenders have on "catch" attempts-- they simply bias the die roll away from "success". I don't think it's good to have the "disc keeps going" as an option if the "catch" roll is too high. Picture this scenario -- 6 defenders are guarding your guy, who rolls a 4 -- the result is 10, way above his "catch" rating of 2. So, the disc keeps going? No way -- one of those defenders would have caught it, or at least knocked it down. I like the idea you're trying to get at, that a miss can result in the disc continuing on its way, but when defenders are involved, I don't think this will happen all that often; it will either be caught, or knocked down. And since separate rules for when you are/are not defended would be too fiddly, I'd just have it be either caught, or a turnover. Much simpler, I think.

All in all, I think this one sounds great. I haven't been following your journal, but suspected that any sports simulation would be a morass of complexity that would kill the feel of the sport. I am pleasantly surprised! I feel like this one strikes a nice balance between simulation and playability. I hope you get it playtested at some point and let us know what the "feel" of the game is like. I could make more suggestions about the rules, perhaps, but ultimately, this one has to make its mark with player experience. If it bogs down, the fairest, cleverest rules won't help it. On the other hand, if it plays quick and punchy, you'll have something that is worth tweaking.
Marketing a game about ultimate may be tough, but to simply make a game that is fun to play, I think you're very much on the right track!

Good show!

-J

* A glossary is probably a must for your rulebook.

Sedjtroll,

I don't want to turn you away from your game or anything, but I think possibly the sellability of an ultimate frisbee game could be quite low. Unfortunately, I think the American public likes more violent type games and ultimate frisbee doesn't fit the bill.

Plus to market such a sports game would be difficult with a big nemesis like BloodBowl and Hasbro's Battleball around.

Having said that, I do like the ideas presented for your game. At least the sports games I've played, one side moves first then the other side. With your game you have a form of simultaneous movement where one side gets one action then the other side another action and so on.

As pointed out, there could be problems with a defender always being covered and so on. However, with the usage of cards for extra abilities outside of the normal play (like moving an extra square to break from a defender), this will make your game workable. The usage of cards will also add a more strategic element to the game.

However, I would go ahead and try a different technique of gathering cards. My personal opinion is to have different players (represented by cards and correspnding counters) that get certain type of cards to begin with; a great thrower some cool throwing cards, a defender better defensive cards. The player would still have one hand of cards but would have cards contributed from different types of players. Now the players themselves on the pitch can only have certain cards played on them that is indicated on the card. For example, a great thrower gives a player a great thrower card which can only be played on him.

By this method you can have differing skills of players while at the same time having cards. Some teams can have different proportions of players (more defensive types) which can give different types of teams (more offensive opposed to defensive). This also helps eliminate players having to remember all of the different types of throws and so on. There would be no need for stats. The differing cards for the players would indicate differing abilities.

The second idea I like is the frisbee that floats across the pitch over several turns. This to me is kind of neat. I would maybe have on both sides of the frisbee counter a number on each side indicating how many hexes it moves for different throws.

When I played ultimate frisbee it was sometimes a good idea to toss the frisbee real close to a player directly behind you (about a couple of feet away) almost like a handoff. A really short throw like this should almost always be automatically successful.

Maybe another idea is also have foul cards or allow players to do fouls which will allow them to impede another player or something to the fouling player's advantage. However, a foul may be caught and a turn over resulting from it. To represent that you could role a die or something.

I think you have some interesting ideas there. I think with better card incorporation, losts of play testing and considering the possibility of different player abilities, this could become a rather fun little game.

Keep working on it.

--DarkDream