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Event Decks ratios

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Sun, 05/31/2015 - 01:30
MarkD1733
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I have an Event Deck for a game for (as you would assume) adding some randomization to deal with. Currently, the event deck has the following cards:

23 FORTUNE
12 MISFORTUNE
3-5 INFLATION
13 BATTLE*
?? NO EVENT

The number of Battle Cards is fixed. The Inflation cards will number at least 3 but max out at 5 (arbitrary choice at this time). The Fortune and Misfortune cards are limited only to my imagination. The Fortune cards obviously benefit the players. The others do not. I also thought that I could throw in some neutral "NO EVENT" cards which act as easy filler but simply do not affect the game when revealed (which I would suggest is actually more fortunate in the game than unfortunate).

Here is the current probability breakdown with 4 Inflation cards and 12 NO EVENT cards (for a total of 64 cards):

35.94% FORTUNE
18.75% MISFORTUNE
6.25% INFLATION
20.31% BATTLE
18.75% NO EVENT

The game is divided into Rounds and Phases and 1 event card is revealed in between each phase (4 per round; currently after all players choose an action). This situation currently affords 16 turns (which I think is enough turns for a full game).

My question is, what do you see as good ratios between all these cards? I understand that playtesting will ultimately tell the tale, but is there anything you see in these percentages that is just plain badly designed? For example, "Fortune shines" a little more than 1/3 the time. If you think NO EVENT = Foturne, then it is about 55% of the time. Compare that with something challenging that happens about 45% (almost half) the time.

Thoughts?

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Sun, 05/31/2015 - 06:46
#1
X3M
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Seems pretty random to

Seems pretty random to me.
However, I don't know what each event really means to the game. So it is hard to tell if it can be done differently.

However, players like to relate to numbers. With 64 in a deck, numbers like 4, 8, 16 should be common.

24 FORTUNE
12 MISFORTUNE
4 INFLATION
12 BATTLE*
12 NO EVENT

"That feel" to it?

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Sun, 05/31/2015 - 07:43
#2
MattPlays
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Very hard to say

as I don't know how severe the fortune/misfortunes are, and are they of varying degrees?

Also, how does this affect the balance of the game? Are they small things like a sword that gives a small combat bonus or is a resurrection etc.

Ask yourself are they affecting the game the right amount. I'm working on a game which has similarities to munchkin, so I broke down the proprtions of the different types of cards and went from there. I needed less items and more monsters so adjusted and playtested accordingly

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Mon, 06/01/2015 - 21:58
#3
MarkD1733
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more on the Event Deck ratios

One important thing I failed to mention is that this is a cooperative game in a historic war theme. So, any fortune or misfortune is for all the players to deal with. I haven't playtested them enough to know if they equally impactful (they DO NOT have to be) or truly well-balanced (they MUST be). They typically manipulate availability of resources, number of troops, provide/limit free actions, etc. I don't believe that any particular events rock the boat too much. instead they simply provide the occasional extra challenge or relief that comes with a "war management" scenario.

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Tue, 06/02/2015 - 21:57
#4
fayinsky
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MarkD1733 wrote:So, any

MarkD1733 wrote:
So, any fortune or misfortune is for all the players to deal with.

Do you mean that all players share the benefits/penalties or that they receive the same amount of benefits/penalties? The former one wouldn't rock the boat too much, true. But the latter one, well, hard to tell. Also, if you allow various number of players, latter one will have a much larger impact when player number grows while the former one will, relatively speaking, affect small number of players greatly.
MarkD1733 wrote:
I don't believe that any particular events rock the boat too much. instead they simply provide the occasional extra challenge or relief that comes with a "war management" scenario.

There are always chances where a specific sequence of events can devastate players. After all 45% chance of encountering challenging events means that 9% of the time 3 misfortune/battle/inflation could happen in a row. And that 9% is significant enough to make me consider how events could affect players collectively.

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