Single Card Event Outcome?

So you bring up the KEY makes this work for what I am using it for. Rather than give any deterministic "good" choices, the player must choose the lesser of all the evils.

If you have 3 "bad" and 1 "good". Players will always choose the good. Even 2 "bad" and 2 "good" cuts off the 2 "bad" in the mind of the player.

Other types of events might give three good options but you only get one of them. This choosing can only be a true/false boolean or a clear option is always automatic in the mind of the player. A card might give heath or stamina and the player would need to pick the best for the current game state.

This gives two decks that players can draw from based on what other things are going on with the game state at the time the "event" needs to be resolved.

This is just one part in an evolving larger system of mechanics that will drive the game engine. the main goal is to let player choices drive the engine rather than the dice.

Too many "solo-games" are just engines that run based on the RNG and player choice takes a back seat. This creates "fun-once" games.

The "bonus" press-your-luck RNG based option on each event provides a risk based element to the otherwise more clear cut choices.

Interesting I have not come across either of those yet in my searches for this type of game. I will check them out!

Thanks everyone, for the feedback so far! I would also love to hear how you might use this in other games.

@BHFuturist

Yes! you see it just as I see it. I like the way you said it, that is a better way to put it. I don't see the player reacting in line with the character's needs as a downside... I see it as immersion :)

You are right about barter vs. trade as one of the "end game" conditions is the overall anger level of the native alien race. Once you "piss" them off enough they come wreck you for a "game over".

@BHFuturist

I have not played Mageknight yet but have been hearing a lot of good things about it by watching videos about it.

You are right about The rest of the game needing to add variability to this mechanic, but I am not sure I agree that a purely deterministic mechanic is immediately predictable.

This issue is that a board game AI runs without human based determinism and is, therefore, more predictable. Chess has purely deterministic mechanics and is not at all predictable because of the human element.

This event card mechanic is part of a larger game design intended to make you as the player run the board game AI without realizing that that is what you are doing based on your meaningful choices. By providing several overlapping "choice gate" systems, I seek to gain variability and replayability.

Starting with a "random" procedurally generated game state. Each game a player will need to make new choices to overcome the starting conditions and form a plan/strategy for how to win based on the evolving game state. Then because each action choice "takes time" not all actions can be done each turn. Some choices will close off others using "choice gates"

I am not saying I have this 100% worked out but the design goals are now quite clear to me and this deterministic event has a role to play in how the system should work.

This is a common designer fallacy. You lump both "players" and "good strategists" into a single group. You will find through playtesting with larger player samples that this is just not the case.

As to the "press your luck" option. You and I may think it would not be the best choice, because of how we see things. But many players don't have the mind of a designer and are more instinct strategists. They do seek out the risk-to-reward options more than you might think. And the truth is many times they have a natural instinct for that type of risk choice that can make them beat a good strategist when those types of choices are mixed in.

You see part of this interesting dynamic in the tactics and play styles that change wildly when you add a 1 min clock to a game of chess. The good strategist finds it much harder to balance the choices when emotions run high and less optimal moves are used based on a chance that the other player might do something "normal" to counter that error.

A bigger topic for another time maybe...

Scenario: You have only 5HP left and 0GP... if you can just make it back to the crash site next turn you can finish the repairs to the drive core and escape the planet... You are bleeding and have no Meds... if tonight as you sleep you take more damage from bleeding you will not have the stamina next turn to make it all the way to the ship... now you draw the event card above... desperate times call for desperate measures? Even I might try to cheat the alien for the free Meds!

You are right, more things need to be going on in the "game state" to make the event cards have meaningful choices that apply to each game state in many ways. If you have more health or enough gold to buy the Meds players might just do those options. An ever evolving game state based on player choice is needed to make this more interesting for the players.

The hardest part is to keep things simple and elegant without sacrificing replayability or the strategic and tactical elements.

Thanks for the insights, already I feel it in my mind helping to develop better ways to make this work!

@BHFuturist

I hope so... but I am not sure I have met all of that criteria at this point. The design idea is still only days old, but it is quickly forming into a multi part action/event/reaction system.

1. Player "chooses" and action and spends a resource (time/stamina/other) to perform that action such as "explore".

2. An event card gives both deterministic and/or random (but known outcome) choices. Event cards might have symbols that "unlock" some choices. These symbols would correspond to action/reaction cards the player can use to deal with some parts of the event.

Note: this would mean the player might need to use a card in order to unlock the theft option from the example card.

1. A player can then use action cards to counter part or all of the event outcome for another twofold cost (a/b).

A. Fist is a normal "cost" on the action just to use it.

(two actions per card, top and bottom)

B. Second cost is the other action that can't be used this turn.

Each action/reaction card would have two abilities, only one can be use each turn and the other is "lost" as part of the cost.

The actions and reaction cards would be very few in number say 4 cards (8 total abilities) the player can keep using them over and over throughout the game each turn. The abilities might also have varying cool-down times per action...

Actions pairs would be dissimilar abilities like "First Aid / Sneak". If you used sneak this turn you could no longer do the First Aid action until after your character rested for the night. Or the First Aid action might have a high negative cost for early use. For instance drinking a water might refresh the First Aid ability for use this turn but the "water break" might cost time as well. (so many aspects to balance, I might need to simplify)

As long as all of the rules for the abilities is clear on the cards, so players don't have to go back to the rule book for how they are used and refreshed, it should work.

At this point I am not sure whether this will frustrate the player? Not being able to use all the actions cards each turn... the action pair balance will be critical...

The main thing is I want the player's choices to drive the game and limit their potions as they do things. Each action they take serves as a "choice gate" closing off other options. As long as that is known going into the choices I think players will understand... as long as I have a thematic reason for each gate.

A better action pair might be "Charge / Sneak" to make them mutually exclusive...

Keep in mind this is a solo survival/adventure game where the player is crashed on an alien planet...

I want the player to balance the resources of time, stamina and heath and maybe some other things like food and water, not sure yet. I don't want it to be a "bean counter" game...

I might turn another direction tomorrow. Like I said this is all just early brainstorming. More thought and work is needed to flesh this out. I may hit you up in the next few days by PM to get your take on things as this develops.

Thanks!

@BHFuturist

I have been looking into Mage Knight and wow, it does have a lot of neat mechanisms that might be useful in what I am doing. Not sure I am going to drop the cash for a copy right now... I have backing Kickstarters heavily this year so the board game budget is lower than normal ;)

I did find another game called Posthuman that has elements I like, that are in line with what I might do. I would still change many things (Theme for sure) but was supersized how cool the game looked.

Posthuman

As things stand now I want the players to roll a set of dice at the start of their turn to set a pool of resources that can be used when dealing with events. They would pick what actions they wanted to do each turn and only some of the time need to draw from several event decks and resolve them before moving on. This dice pool would be similar to the way Tiny Epic Galaxies does things but they would not be "actions" you take but resources you could use during your actions.

Tiny Epic Galaxies

I am still debating about the use of randomness trying to make sure I keep the random elements on the correct side of player choice.

Players would be able to use an action/resource "Rondel" to make sure they got at least one of the resource they wanted each turn. still not sure how I want that to work either. And they would be able to spend a resource like stamina to re-roll dice in that resource phase of each turn... before events are drawn.

Event cards with the deterministic choices might now have bonus sections that can only be accessed at the cost of the resources from the dice pool.

Player Resources for handling events:

• Time
• Stamina
• Health
• Energy (space suit battery)
• Items/Equipment (might take energy to use)

Dice Pool Resources: (WIP list not sure what type of mental/physical resources to use yet and whether to add character stats into the mix)

• Strength
• Dexterity
• Endurance
• Willpower
• Instinct
• Logic

I want the dice resources to be how the player activates abilities and how they unlock sections of the event cards... so the names of the resources might change as I work out the theme of the abilities and events.

Still a lot of things to work out... I am thinking this could be a multi-player game with a solo version not sure yet. I want to firm up the list of components needed for all the tracking so I can get into a prototype soon.

I would love to hear your thoughts... I might need to move this into a "Crash Landing" game journal at some point...

@BHFuturist

Edit:

I found another interesting game that has neat mechanics.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/53840/adventure-d

Sorry, I did not describe how any of that might work very well. Here is take two... I hope this makes more sense.

I do see a logical separation between three types of player resources, but only from a design mechanic sense as they are all just "player resources".

• Player Resources (use and recharge with rest, sleep, first aid)
• Dice Resources (one time use)
• Player ability cards (limited use with a cool down)

Right now there are several mechanics that interact.

• Deterministic action turn focus (Rondel here)
• Random resource generation (Custom Dice)
• Deterministic action selections (pay for each as you take them)
• Leveled action cost/outcome based on player choices (Move X number of hexes | 1=X, 2=Y, 3=Z effects)
• Random card draws with Deterministic resolutions (the card mechanic this started with)
• Deterministic Card based "Actions/Ability pairs" (described in an earlier post in this thread)

No-ish... There is no "need" for that many. I might keep shorting the list and just have, more sides of the dice with the same icon to make that resource easier to roll. I just made up 6 new resources when adding dice to the idea... + six sides right? lol

In the end I might be simplifying it down to only 6-9 total

(food/water/energy are on the short list to be cut).

• Time
• Stamina
• Water
• Food
• Health
• Energy

On the dice:

• Mind
• Body
• Spirit

The Dice faces might be more like this:

• 1 Body (works for Str, Dex, End)
• 2 Body (copy)
• 3 Mind (works for instinct, logic, tech)
• 4 Spirit (willpower, focus, interaction with NPC sub-events)
• 5 Blank (no re-roll or modification this turn)
• 6 Wild (can re-roll for free or spend a stamina to set the face)

Even this is still up in the air. I want the dice resources to be something that fits the theme by giving the player some way of coping with challenges and paying for the card based abilities.

The part that is hard to explain is the relationship between each mechanic.

I see a turn playing like this:

• Player selects one focus area for this “day” (game turn) on an action rondel
• Player rolls 2-6 custom dice (amount based on other factors like stamina/wounds/status effects)
• Player spends stamina and time to take as many actions as they can until stamina or time run out
• Player Actions (Explore, Search, Use items, Repair ship systems, harvest/collect discovered resources, rest, activate ability cards, sleep)

The event cards would mostly be drawn during explore or search actions depending on the level of that action the player was choosing to compete.

• Explore 1 - 1 stamina and 1 time to move one hex and draw/resolve one event card

• Explore 2 – 3 stamina, 3 time, 1 water to move 2-4 hexes and draw/resolve two event cards

• Explore 3,4,5... Search 1-5 (player picks what level of action to do based on if they have the resource cost)

During event resolution players pick the cost to complete the event, but can also activate abilities that might change the outcome or activate bonuses on the cards by using the dice resources.

It is all still just a work in progress and nothing is set in stone at this point. Might even work as a 2-6 player game with a traitor... if more than one crew member serviced the crash and one of the players made the ship crash to start with.......

The main "event card" mechanic needs more graphic design layout work to see how much I can really fit on one card and have it all still make sense to the players. (Icons / Text / Color Codes / Sub-Sections)

Thanks for taking an interest in the game mechanics and helping me to keep my brain moving in the right direction.

@BHFuturist

Great question! It pains me to say that normally I have a very clear target audience (as that is something I do think about a lot)... but until you asked I had not given that any thought for this game.

It may be a bad design habit but I tend to add a lot of things in the first few drafts of a game (overdesign), then take things that did not work well out and refine things that worked or were the most fun. So it may seem complicated now but I do keep things as simple as I can by the end.

Half of the trick of game design is to find ways of making complex things, intuitive and easy, for the players to understand. Keep in mind, much of this idea is literally 15 days old today... that is a very short time in hobbyist game design when working full time for the man ;)

I think you could say that I have been the target audience, in this case, until now... so maybe I would set it as:

"Gamers who choose to be that one member of their gaming group that reads game rules and then teach the rest how to play. Gamers that want to play games when it is not game night..."

This started as a solo adventure game that would only use one piece of paper, a pencil or pen, and some dice. But the idea is still evolving.

This is the game I played that set me down this path

I want to make a game engine that the player interacts with in a meaningful way and not just something where they operate the rules to see what happens... this means the game needs to take the place of a DM in the form of an abstracted AI based on player choices. sigh I have a long way to go, lol

I will need to give this more thought! Thanks for asking the question and setting my mind in motion.

@BHFuturist

I will send you and Daggaz a PM later... I also like the idea of taking turns to talk about our game ideas. Maybe we can set up some type of round table in a voice chat room (like my discord)

@BHFuturist

LOL, true... it is not likely we will all be on at the same time that much... but three is a good number for brainstorm and discussion.

These three seem to get along well...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x0Jz9YVoug

@BHFuturist