Skip to Content
 

Help/advise on mechanics for a newcomer

6 replies [Last post]
Mon, 03/13/2017 - 16:40
stiffler
Offline
Joined: 03/13/2017

hello guys and gals..i'm completely new here and a fairly new boardgaming hobbyist for around 6 months time.. i'm quite inexperienced but i have a creative drive so i want to give a try at making something, good or bad, just for the fun of it..i have to apologize beforehand for my english but they are not my mother language and i posted i posted in the wrong section..ok if you're still with me let's go to the matter at hand..

right now i am at the early stages of developing a dungeon crawl, i have come up with the general idea of what and how the game is gonna be and i try to apply the core battle mechanic for it..i try to maintain a simple approach with few dice involved and i am between two options for the time being but first let me give you the general picture..

my characters will have, among others, a strength value which is the one important for battle... each character will get a weapon which will have its own values where the important one for our case is the attack value. so the strength value of the character and the attack value of the weapon determines the potential damage value.

for example: a character have 7 strength and the weapon 5 attack, combined together they have a total of 12 potential damage. the one way to determine the score is to roll a d6 with 3 damage sides and 3 miss sides and the other way is to roll 3d6 and if the middle value is 3 and below is a miss whether a 4 and above is a hit.
i still try to come up with a more elegant way to determine damage so any input or advice will be pretty helpful..thanks in advance.

Top
Mon, 03/13/2017 - 16:51
#1
The Odd Fox
The Odd Fox's picture
Offline
Joined: 01/19/2017
Game design advice

Welcome to the forum! My advice for you is to immerse yourself in games that do what you are trying to accomplish. The more familiar you are with the mechanics of well established games the more you can creatively deviate from them in an effective way or else you might just realize that what these games do is tried and true for a reason. Descent, Zombicide: Black Plague and Masmora: Dungeons of Arcadia are all variations of how dungeon crawls can be done. There are lots more to choose from but these were some of my favorites.

Top
Tue, 03/14/2017 - 07:03
#2
stiffler
Offline
Joined: 03/13/2017
thanks for the reply

thanks for the reply friend..
i have played a number of the dungeon crawlers that exist out there like descent, claustrophobia, the d&d adventure system, heroquest and more but i understand what you're trying to say..on daily basis i'm watching youtube gameplay vids for various types of games to get ideas or just to expand my knowledge of the genre.. surely with time comes the experience but input from more seasoned players than me is always welcome..

Top
Wed, 03/15/2017 - 16:27
#3
let-off studios
let-off studios's picture
Offline
Joined: 02/07/2011
Streamlined Combat

From what you've written here it seems your combat is simple and quick-to-resolve. If you want to emphasize intricate, tactic-rich combat you may want to add some complexity modifiers ranging from opposing rolls (attack values versus defense values) to unit positioning (such as flanking, blind-siding, or sneak-attacks).

My only serious recommendation is that you put it on the table and start playtesting as soon as possible. It may all sound perfect and smooth in your head, but when it's in the "real world" is when it matters.

Games like Hero Quest and Dungeon! have gone the casual route, and due to being combined with other mechanics have done well in the market. The next steps "up" in complexity can take you in a number of directions. You'll find a balance between all your chosen mechanics based on what you want to achieve, and can tweak your current design in that direction through successive revisions.

Best of success to you in your project, stiffler! :D

Top
Wed, 03/15/2017 - 19:34
#4
Willem Verheij
Willem Verheij's picture
Offline
Joined: 06/08/2016
It sounds similar to what

It sounds similar to what Flying Frog does with most their games, at least with a touch of evil and fortune and glory.

In that game you have a combat skill which is used for combat tests.
If the combat skill is 4, you get to roll 4 dice. Each dice that rolls a 5 or a 6 means its a hit and deals one damage.
(in fortune and glory it's 4, 5 or 6.)

Objects, allies, but mostly weapons can add to the combat skill, thus increasing the number of dice you get to roll for the combat skill check, so the better chance you have at succeeding.

The other skills spirit, cunning and honour in A touch of evil and the skills of Lore, cunning and agility in Fortune and Glory are all resolved pretty much the same way.
Only with combat it's resolved in multible rounds.

In fortune and Glory you also get to reroll your dice when you have at least one succes in skill tests that arent combat unless it's a deadly test.

Top
Thu, 03/16/2017 - 09:43
#5
stiffler
Offline
Joined: 03/13/2017
thanks for the replies

thanks for the replies guys!

right now i try to take a whole different approach... instead of basing battle on total luck of the dice i decided to make it a bit more, i don't know, "strategic" maybe..i placed a token mechanic where you can chose the number of strength and attack you want to use..

so for example if the character have 7 strength and the weapon 5 attack you can place tokens of strength and attack to get a number of dice...say, placing 3 tokens of strength for a d6 and 2 tokens of attack for a d4 attack, or 5 strength tokens for 2d6 and 4 attack tokens for a 2d4 attack...the character will have a fatigue value and the weapon a durability value so a potential attack will drain these stats..of course there would be effects, etc to counter the draining but that's the basic idea for the battle system..

Top
Thu, 04/13/2017 - 22:19
#6
ssm
ssm's picture
Offline
Joined: 04/06/2017
I am a fan of simplicity.

I am a fan of simplicity. When someone starts running through the things I need to do in order to attack the person in front of me, I blank out.
A simple way for this to maybe work is issuing modifiers on str & dam that are a one-time-use.
Let's say the average number of battles a player will engage in is 40. If players are issued about enough to remove randoms for 30 of those 40; would that work?
Limit the modifier to a portion of each AND limit the max (because they have help). So let's say you have 7 str & 5 dam, maybe you can only use 5 in mods. So you play your 3 str mods & 2 dam mods, so you have 5 you know you will do. Then instead of being able to reach 12 with rolls, you are limited to 9 (limited due to mods help). At that point you already have 5 used and a 1d4 roll will settle the rest.
If you limit how much they get and can use per battle, it adds strategy for the players since now they have to decide when & where to use mods, when to save them, etc.
If I come across a ghost or something that can only do a max of 4 dam, I would save my mods for a tougher battle and take my chances on the small guy, hoping I don't get wiped out.

Top
Syndicate content


forum | by Dr. Radut