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8 replies [Last post]
Mon, 01/07/2013 - 22:38
questccg
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Hi all,

I am working on a Dungeon Crawl board game and I am using a Storybook for the story-mode of the crawl.

I am also trying to develop a *random-mode* for the game.

The thing is the *random-mode* doesn't make much sense without the story. What I mean is there would be no story elements to the game. It would be just Movement-Battles-Traps... That sounds VERY BORING.

What I was thinking was to use the story-mode but implement RANDOM monster encounter and traps.

But the thing is, there are always "story elements" that make it not so realistic. Let me give you an example: on one tile, an Anaconda comes out of the water for the players to combat it. In a RANDOM-mode, you would randomly choose the monster and say a *Rock Golem* came out of the water?!?!

Not a very realistic scenario - but still possible using the story-mode to implement the random-mode.

Without the story-mode you don't have NPC (Non-player characters - basically other characters in the game beside the adventure party) and a bunch of side quests that make story-mode interesting to play.

I want to know: Do you think that story-mode with random traps and encounters (even illogical ones) is a reasonable "random-mode" of game play???

Many thanks for your comments.

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Tue, 01/08/2013 - 11:40
#1
Orangebeard
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What about a random mode

What about a random mode region?

For example, a dark forest or desert waste setting that features all random encounters, but they are all appropriate for that region.

Maybe regions are outdoors for random mode and story line is indoors for random mode

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Tue, 01/08/2013 - 13:09
#2
JustActCasual
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Why do you WANT random mode

Why do you WANT random mode in your game?

From what you're saying, it seems to detract from the strong Narrativist base of the game. If this is just for replay value it seems like lazy design: there are better ways to switch it up that tie into your core gameplay.

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Tue, 01/08/2013 - 15:03
#3
questccg
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In the works

Orangebeard wrote:
What about a random mode region?

We currently have drafted 7 Dungeon Sets (some of which are outdoors). We will only be developing one as a sample of what the game is. The others will get developed over time.

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Tue, 01/08/2013 - 15:05
#4
questccg
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JustActCasual wrote:Why do

JustActCasual wrote:
Why do you WANT random mode in your game?

From what you're saying, it seems to detract from the strong Narrativist base of the game. If this is just for replay value it seems like lazy design: there are better ways to switch it up that tie into your core gameplay.

Well I wanted players to be able to replay the game (after completing it) which a different challenge. Obviously you can use a different *Storybook* for the Dungeon Set...

Let me go back to the beginning...

(Winding back the clock...)

Okay so I am going to say that at first I wanted a Dungeon Crawl where players can fight monsters and win rewards for doing so. Naturally this was new and very exciting. But then came the fact that the game was missing something: TRAPS. Okay the game now has monsters, rewards and traps. Cool.

But then when play testing, the game seemed *empty*. I did not want more of the same (more traps, more monsters, etc.) So I got the idea of adding SIDE-QUESTS. And originally these were going to be cards... But I was unhappy with how little story content I could put on the cards. So I got rid of the "artwork" on those cards. Still it was not enough to write on the cards a basic story for the quest...

Then came the idea of Storybooks (The Present): one would follow the game in a storybook. Wow, this was now exciting and new. I could write as much preface content to quests, I could have NPCs and suddenly the game went from a simple game to something I really could get into... (I like story-telling and that was the reason I used to play video games - for the story).

But as I thought up of this way of playing the game (story-mode), I realized that after you play the game all the way through, I needed something for replay value... I wanted to offer players ANOTHER challenge. As it stands, story-mode gradually introduce players to the game and plays "nice" with them because early on creatures/monstres are easier to battle... So I wanted to offer what the game initially had: a purely random-mode.

So back to the very present, I wanted to have a way to play the *tougher* challenge of a RANDOM adventure. And I realized that all the side-quests in the story-mode give the real "beef" of the game. Having a random-mode without the story elements gets us back to the beginning... But if I *combined* story-mode with random encounters and traps, well that would prove to be a DIFFERENT challenge.

Ideas and comments welcome...

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Tue, 01/08/2013 - 18:43
#5
kos
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Multiple stories? Subtypes? GM?

From the sounds of it the basis of your game is the story. It is what makes the game engaging. (Random dungeon crawls with monsters, traps, and treasure have been done many times already, so there's nothing very new about that.)

Can you make multiple stories from one deck of cards? So your story book might have three or four stories (chapters?) with increasing difficulty using subsets of the one deck of cards.

Some randomization in the encounters could work if you split the monsters deck into subtypes. E.g. a typical encounter might be "Draw 3 cards from the Undead deck", while the final showdown might be "Play the Lich Lord and draw 5 more cards from the Undead deck". Then the players can re-play the adventure on "Hard" mode by adding +2 cards to every encounter.

Have you considered using a GM? I.e. the players play through the storybook to get an idea of the mechanics, and then somebody volunteers to be the GM to create new stories to play. This would work if your side-quest cards are sufficiently flexible for the GM to assemble them in new ways.

Regards,
kos

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Wed, 01/09/2013 - 00:44
#6
questccg
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More immersive experience

kos wrote:
From the sounds of it the basis of your game is the story. It is what makes the game engaging. (Random dungeon crawls with monsters, traps, and treasure have been done many times already, so there's nothing very new about that.)

Yes, the story-mode is much more immersive that just a random crawl. And yes again to your second comment, dungeon crawls have been done many times...

kos wrote:
Can you make multiple stories from one deck of cards? So your story book might have three or four stories (chapters?) with increasing difficulty using subsets of the one deck of cards.

Yes again, you can create multiples stories for one Dungeon Set. Currently I am writing the Storybook from an NPCs point of view. Basically in the first adventure, you are accompanied by an Elderly Dwarf who used to be a well know Fighter. His council of elders has appointed him to be your guide through the perils of the Dwarven Mine. But nothing stops you from just writing a Storybook without the NPC as the host of the game...

Difficulty in the game is managed by the overall strength of creatures. They are all level 1 on the cards but you need to ADD Attack and Defense (1 point per 2 levels) to match the creature/monster you are going to battle with. So the game gets naturally harder as the players play the game.

kos wrote:
Have you considered using a GM? I.e. the players play through the storybook to get an idea of the mechanics, and then somebody volunteers to be the GM to create new stories to play. This would work if your side-quest cards are sufficiently flexible for the GM to assemble them in new ways.

I did not want a GM (or DM). But a GM could write up a new story given the Storybook they purchase... The can have their own adventures, eventually mixing and matching several Dungeon Sets... The side-quests are built into the the Storybook. If you write a completely new Storybook, you can do whatever you like... The narration is based on the Storybook and the mechanic used by it is sufficiently flexible to accommodate new side-quests...

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Wed, 01/09/2013 - 16:10
#7
JustActCasual
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Continue?

If you want replay value and variety, why not look at the old Choose Your Own Adventure books? It allows you to keep the GM role in the book, and play up the other strengths of the Storybook mechanic (cohesive environment, opportunity for awesome specific flavour material) while still providing more options. Putting various 'unlockable' scenarios would be really cool: say if you finish the first tutorial challenge in 1-2 rounds it puts you on a harder route.

Other story mechanic I like is the multiple haunts for Betrayal at House on the Hill: each game has the same first act (exploring the haunted house, which is built room by room) leading into a random selection of the second and third acts (usually second act the haunt appears and someone becomes the traitor, with very specific special rules and flavour depending on the haunt, then the third act involves working together to defeat the various elements of the haunt). It manages to keep a strong narrative structure while only taking about 2 pages to explain each haunt (usually one page for traitor one page for the rest). With more than 20 different haunts it has a lot of replay value.

On a different note: have you thought at all about using the book as a physical component? You could use some kind of bookmarks to indicate a portal or a random event, and then change the number of bookmarks depending on the desire for that session's length. Or you could cut away on one of the pages to make a template (rocks fall on anyone under the page). Depending on the binding you could even put the map for each room on the pages themselves.

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Thu, 01/10/2013 - 12:58
#8
pelle
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variation

By coincidence I put a copy of the reprint of the first Fabled Lands game book in my Amazon shopping basket only a few days ago. Will be the first game book I buy in decades. :) Fabled Lands might be relevant to making your game replayable because as I understand it it has a lot of variation (as opposed to any game books I remember playing back in the 80's). Here is the review by Greg Costikyan I first learned about the series from:

http://playthisthing.com/fabled-lands-and-flapp

"turning the paragraph texts into short adventures that could be encountered in (almost) any order, and providing a game system beyond the rudimentary to handle aspects such as travel and trade. The virtue of this is to vastly increase replayability, extend play time, avoid the trap of explosive branching, and make the game itself far richer. The books suggest that the genre in which they were created could have eventually evolved into one worth something more than the recycling bin -- but of course, the market was already dying when they appeared."

They are (of course) on gamebooks.org:
http://www.gamebooks.org/show_series.php?id=145

"Probably the most intricately designed gamebooks ever published, the Fabled Lands books are all interconnected; each book represents a different segment of a larger world, and it is possible to hop from book to book in a non-linear fashion, completing quests and gaining in experience. ... Codewords are used in each book to keep track of which areas have already been visited and which major events have already occurred, and there are sometimes places in the text where players may leave behind items to be retrieved later. ..."

And all that without even using a board or cards.

The books are also available as free downloads now, so you could steal some ideas from them perhaps.

You might also be able to get some ideas from the Ambush! series of paragraph-driven board adventure rpg/wargames. They are a bit combat-focused but have some clever system to allow for variation and even though most published missions have low probability, it would be possible to use its sightings+events+conditions system to make scenarios of almost infinite replayability. I have posted some ideas (and links to some tools I made) here:
http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/299841/diy-ambush-missions

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