Skip to Content
 

Trials of the Shard Hunters - Full rules and game, please read and critique! PnP also available

9 replies [Last post]
Sun, 12/20/2015 - 14:14
Michael Melkonian
Offline
Joined: 12/19/2015

Hey everyone!

I've uploaded the rule book for a prototype I'm working on called "Trials of the Shard Hunters." This is my first draft, it will inevitably have typos, be poorly structured, overlook pertinent information and have many other problems. I'm hoping that with your help (and criticism!) I can refine it and make it a tighter rule book than it currently is. Below are two links, one is to the PDF and the other is to the word doc.

Trials of the Shard Hunters - Rule Book (PDF)

Trials of the Shard Hunters - Rule Book (Word Doc)

The word doc isn't formatted the way I would like it to be, but the PDF is, so please read the PDF version before making changes on the word doc. Also, since the game is made up entirely of cards, I went ahead and uploaded all of the print out sheets so that you can critique those as well. This also means that if anyone wishes to print out the cards and the rules, this can serve as a fully functional PnP prototype!

- Michael M.
______________

Print n' Play Files:

Trials of the Shard Hunters - Location Cards

Trials of the Shard Hunters - Tactics Deck (Blue)

Trials of the Shard Hunters - Tactics Deck (Yellow)

Trials of the Shard Hunters - Tactics Backs (Print x4)

Trials of the Shard Hunters - Character, Dark Lair and Misc. Cards

(Temporary art is from Torchlight, Prince of Persia, Descent and random google searches.)

Top
Wed, 12/23/2015 - 01:02
#1
Michael Melkonian
Offline
Joined: 12/19/2015
So, apparently my word

So, apparently my word document wasn't actually letting people edit. That's been fixed now!

Top
Wed, 12/23/2015 - 06:56
#2
DChristiany
Offline
Joined: 04/23/2014
Request access

Hi Michael,
I would like to take a look at your rules and the pnp materials.
However, I need to request access to the documents first (even the read-only ones), which just seems unnecessary.
If you could change that, I would gladly take a look.

Regards

Daniel

Top
Wed, 12/23/2015 - 11:13
#3
Michael Melkonian
Offline
Joined: 12/19/2015
Oh man, that's embarrassing.

I'm so sorry! I thought I'd made them available to anyone, but I guess not. I think I've fixed the problem, please let me know. I appreciate you taking the time!

Top
Sat, 12/26/2015 - 14:53
#4
Michael Melkonian
Offline
Joined: 12/19/2015
How does one go about getting

How does one go about getting people interested in a W.I.P.? I've posted my entire game and rule sheet, so I'm a little confused as to why no one is commenting in this thread. Maybe its just that everyone is busy for the holidays? I don't mean to whine, it's just that I feel like I can't make any progress on the game until I hear from people, and I'm not hearing from people. So what should I do?

Top
Sat, 12/26/2015 - 21:00
#5
Mark Simulacra
Offline
Joined: 05/21/2015
Potential Issues

So it's been a little while since I first looked over this and, if I remember correctly, there were a couple things that seemed like potential issues but that might have been resolved by other design choices that weren't immediately apparent. One concern I had was the emphasis on getting a good hand at the start of the game before beginning to adventure. That seems like it could be somewhat dull if I understood it correctly?

Top
Sun, 12/27/2015 - 09:10
#6
Michael Melkonian
Offline
Joined: 12/19/2015
I was worried about that too.

I was worried about that too. When I was designing the game, I had envisioned the whole game being broken down into three "phases" (not to be confused with the turn phases), the preparation back the stronghold phase, the journey towards the dark lair phase, and the journey back to the stronghold phase, all three of which are played differently. For the beginning, I was also worried that it would be boring. From ply testing it seems that this isn't the case, it seems that tension between building your hand while also wanting to be the first out the gate is interesting enough to keep players engaged for at leas two to three minutes, which is the only amount of time that ever actually takes. Of course, more play testing would have to reveal if this is the case for most gamers. I've been going off a pretty small sample of testers so far.

Top
Sun, 12/27/2015 - 12:29
#7
Mark Simulacra
Offline
Joined: 05/21/2015
Interesting

Interesting. Glad to hear its not the issue I was worried it would be.

Another worry I have is: doesn't it seem more advantageous to wait until your opponent raids the dark lair and then waylay them for the Shard as you'll likely have more cards remaining than they will and will therefor be better equipped to grab the artifact from them without them being able to grab it back. Though if this is the optimal strategy it seems like a stalling game would arise, though I get the feeling this is intentional?

Has this been an issue at all in testing?

Top
Sun, 12/27/2015 - 13:23
#8
Michael Melkonian
Offline
Joined: 12/19/2015
That's absolutely an issue

That's absolutely an issue I'm trying to solve. I need to incentivize being the first to get the shard without it feeling like an automatic win for the person who gets it first. The way I tried doing this was by having the Shard give bonus powers to the person carrying it. I don't know if I've done that in the best way yet, probably not. Gonna get some play testing done with strangers over the next couples of days. I'm curious to see what they say.

Top
Wed, 12/30/2015 - 13:22
#9
Michael Melkonian
Offline
Joined: 12/19/2015
Alright, just spent two days

Alright, just spent two days gaming, and here's some of the feedback I got:

I proposed the single deck idea, and the players all felt that having their own decks was better. I may still test it the way Egor suggested, but players seem to like having their own deck.

Also, hand size is an issue. In the first iteration of the game, the number of cards you had to discard down to after the preparation phase was 6. The game was more "Explosive" then because everyone was countering everything, but it also seemed like you had too many options with six cards. When I tested it as 3 cards, it was way too restrictive. Maybe 4 or 5 would be a healthy balance.

Also, they seem to want an "unresolved" condition on the encounter cards instead of "retreating." Right now, if you can't resolve an encounter, you discard your hand and move back to the stronghold. That seemed like too great of a penalty for the players, they suggested that each encounter shoulder have "Unresolved: Insert Penalty Here" text at the bottom of the card. I'm worried that may be too much verbiage on the cards, but I'll try it.

Also, I play tested the setup instructions of the rule book. I think I need to remove "Shard Hunters" from the card backs, since it was confusing players when asked to put a shard somewhere, or select their Shard Hunter character. Since all the cards had the word Shard on them, it was throwing them off.

Over all, pretty useful feed back, I just need to do some more refining.

One thing that's kind of weird for me is that the experience of playing the game is very different from what I wanted it to be. In my head, it was very "take that!"ish with people laughing and "No!"ing at each other while they play. Instead, it a very quiet game with people occasionally "Hmming" at each other before placing a card down. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but its so not really what I was going for.

Top
Syndicate content


forum | by Dr. Radut