About a week ago I reported back about playtesting the first iteration of Rumors of Chaos (http://www.bgdf.com/forum/game-creation/playtesting/first-playtest-rumor...) In that round of playtesting I found a significant flaw in one of the major mechanics for the game (possibly something that would have been obvious before playtesting to some, but yay being a new game designer!) So, I've spent the past week working on a new, drastically revised version of the mechanic and I am here to ask your feedback on it as I get started preparing my next prototype!
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~Game Summary~
Rumors of Chaos is a fully cooperative fantasy adventure game that takes place in a small kingdom set on a hexagonal map. The players take on the roles of group of heroes who set out to deal with a number of different 'Rumors' These different Rumors will be different enemies or problems going on in the kingdom which the heroes have to deal with. Eventually these Rumors will lead to a Mastermind which is the cause behind it all. Defeat the Mastermind and you win. Let the Castle fall and you lose.
~The Problem With Version 0.1~
Originally I had the Rumors as cards from a deck appearing at random locations on the board. However, one important aspect of the Rumors mechanic is that the Heroes have a chance to get to them and deal with them before they are 'Realized'. That means that each Rumor needs to sit dormant but also secret for a time before being flipped over and taking place. Between this and keeping track of where the cards were on the board became much too great a hassle for the quick pace meant to be taken in the game.
~Introducing Hexagonal Tiles~
My solution is to scrap the deck entirely and instead seed the board at the beginning of the game with Hexagonal tiles. The back of the tiles will match the location on the board where they will be placed, as well as having pertinent information as to when they are Realized and how hard it is to engage them before they are Realized. The players start by picking 3 different thematic sets of 33 tiles each to mix together. First they take the 2 Lieutenant tiles from each of these sets for a total of 6 and randomly place 2 of those 6 on the board before placing the other 4 back in the box. These tiles will be marked on the back indicate that they are not just normal Rumors but Lieutenants. Each Lieutenant has its own unique location that it begins the game at. The players then randomize the other tiles and place them on the locations marked until all 33 locations on the board are covered. Other than Lieutenants the back of the tiles for each set are identical, meaning that in any given playthrough there are 3 possibilities for what each tile will be.
~Gameplay with Hex Tiles~
Once the game starts there is a 'Chaos Track' that starts at 0 and increases by 1 every turn. It can be increased further by events such as players running out of health, villages being destroyed, and specific Rumors not being dealt with. Each Tile has a Realization number on it, where if the Chaos Track reaches that number, it will go active at the end of the turn. This could be things such as an Orc Warband starting to Roam the countryside or a Fire Elemental starting a forest fire. The players will be dealing with these threats both to protect the kingdom and keep things from getting out of hand, as well as a way to level and gear up for tougher encounters later on.
When the Chaos Track reaches 20 and 30 respectively, each of the 2 Lieutenants will be revealed. As noted previously, these Lieutenant tiles will be marked uniquely. The Chaos 20 Orc tile might be in the Mountains while the Chaos 20 Undead tile might be in the Swamp. The players can choose to go after these early as well, though they'll be significantly harder than other Rumors.
Once either both of the Lieutenants have been dealt with or the Chaos Track reaches 40 the Mastermind will appear. They'll be determined by the combination of the 2 Lieutenants (meaning if you're playing with Orcs, Undead, and Dragons there could be up to 6 different Masterminds you could run into). At the same time, there will still be Rumors being Realized up to Chaos of 50 if they haven't already been dealt with by the heroes.
~Feedback Request~
I'd love to hear some feedback on this mechanic, both positive and negative! A couple of questions I already am wondering as I prepare the prototype are:
-Will setup feel overwhelming going through up to 99 tiles to cover the board.
-Is having the Lieutenants marked but in unique locations going to take away from replayability because the players will potentially already know which 2 Lieutenants and therefore which Mastermind they will be facing before they start?
Thanks!
-Alex
Players do move around the board. The board has different terrain types that cost different amounts to move across and each hero has a speed stat. Speed can be increased by equipment and leveling up.
Each round the players will choose the order of their actions. These can be done individually or shared. Ideally part of the strategy of the game will be figuring out when you need to split up to reach multiple rumors at the same time and when you need to come together to face something too powerful for just one hero to take on. My initial model is for each round to have every hero have a move action and then every hero have an additional action but that may change if it's too frustrating for heroes to find themselves waiting on other heroes.
Resolving Rumors will be dealt with mostly by stat checks with die rolls. My current plan is to have D6s with 3 1s, 2 2s, and 1 3 and have 1 die rolled for each stat point present for the encounter. This will be how it works for both combat and noncombat encounters. Failure will often result in heroes taking damage (especially in combat encounters) or other negative effects, or sometimes no loss other than time.
On a side note: Would it be useful for me to write up a full game summary (which I feel like I just did between my main post and this comment) in the form of a blog post or something else? I'm still pretty new to bgdf and am still learning etiquette here. My goal with this thread was to get feedback on a specific mechanic but wanted to make sure I fully explained it and didn't want to assume people would go read something else in order to understand the contest.