Also worth looking at: Garfield's Lecture on "Luck vs. Skill" , particularly his mention of "toy games" which aren't games which are fun or that people would necessarily want to play, but from which you can learn fundamental things.
PS- I don't agree with his idea that games like Chess involve luck, rather the uncertainty in outcomes is purely a function of complexity (which is what Garfield actually means, so it's really a matter of semantics.) But I'd also note Garfield's status as a designer, one of the very few who developed an entirely novel method of play, and his background in Combinatorial Mathematics.
I have discovered something interesting and disturbing: An old answer of mine has a ruling that cites a page of official rulings. That page of official rulings has disappeared, and now the text of the rule I cited only exists on the Internet in that answer, and another page that cites that answer
As long as good questions are being asked, it is no big deal who is asking them. It is a Q and A site after all.
Plus this isn't so uncommon, it seems to happen where someone with a bunch of questions floating around in their head stumbles onto the site and will kind of take over for a week until all those questions are asked. Then things die down for a bit.
Also I think I may have an elegant solution to your timer issue, do you have any stiff cardstock?
with a bit of database logic, there's no need to have duplicate tokens
rather, just number tokens, one on the board, one on the timer
I put the "3" token on both the timer and the zombie
that's just "situation 3" ticking down
if not even that is clear enough, I can just add a paper saying "zombie dies" under "#3" in the time bar
for playtesting, that'll work fine. For a more shapely game, I'll have little symbolic tokens like "decay", "explode", etc. to put numbers on the time bar
a little token with a melting skull and "3" on it on the timebar will pretty obviously mean "hey, situation/unit 3 is going to decay"
it adds a bit of complexity to my game but it opens up a HUGE area of possibility
it basically solves my economy system for now
putting an AP 5 turns ahead basically means "this costs 1 AP/turn for the next 5 turns, for a total of 5"
putting 3 AP 5 turns ahead basically means something costs 15 AP, a large cost compared to the normal pools
but earning slower is the same as earning normally and being forced to spend
you place the counters you want to track on the top part equal to the number of turns you want to track
than each turn you rotate the wheel in the middle layer. When the counters are next to the 0 (accidentally made it an 8 in diagram) then what every you were tracking happens
this makes it simple as you have one constantly ticking down timer that each player uses
you can subdivide the wheel as much as you want too, but I probably would go more than 11 just to keep thing legible. plus then you can have a 10-0 countdown
now that the units are produced in a queue and they share an AP with the economy, I'm getting the whole "fights will make you focus on the fights and not the economy" concept down
and this can help "freeze" certain events too
like a zombie decaying over time unless it's in a cemetery or around a necromancer
If you are going to add the ability to freeze cool downs, I would recommend cutting out the interior of the wheel. that way you can move tokens onto the physical wheel and they will be able to turn with your timer
otherwise you have the issue of advancing things each turn again
I would also recommend flat stack able tokens (like coins) as there won't be a whole lot of room on the timer wheel.
in mtg delaying your actions (and you opponent knowing for sure when you are going to take in action) is a pretty big disadvantage, so the suspend cards are aggressively costed for balance
the thing is, I can already see it, players will be tempted to leave themselves at 2 AP for 12 turns to build a behemoth, but a player with 3-4 AP basically has 12 turns to sufficiently cripple them in the meantime
maybe the planning cap itself can be an asset
I'm trying to think what it represents
your AP max definitely represents some kind of income
I mean
you get APMAX/turn
if you get 3 per turn, and they don't stack, then it just means you have to spend, but you get 3 per turn regardless
in a game like Catan, that's just you getting things each turn
so, allocate 2 AP to the first box. at the next turn, since the box is full, advance to the next box. allocate 2ap to the second box. at the next turn, since the box is full, the unit is built
if they can choose to cripple themselves for 4 turns to build something, or do nothing this turn.... maybe that is a genuine fun thing to choose instead of a vaguely unfun thing for me, the dev, to choose
it goes quite in-tune with my initial theme of the game: several civilisations trying to colonise this crackling, chaotic world, by trying to tame the chaos
re: crippling oneself for a long term boost--I find that kind of gameplay thrilling because the player is in agony each turn, wondering if they're going to cross that threshold before someone ruins their day!
the micromanagement being streamlined with this system, and the macro being somewhat chaotic... I was thinking that the only dice are rolled when the -world-, everyone's enemy, does things
and the borders are nasty stuff, outside of the mostly-orderly areas of the colonies, there's maelstroms, shifting sands, chunks of land falling into the void, monsters that attack on sight
so far the on-board tokens are visible to all... one thing I'm not a fan of is memorisation
if I get serious about this game (and let's be real, I will) I'll try more or less chaos
@AlexMitan haha--that sounds like the chart I helped TheMattBatt design for his RPG, where the topology of the diagram dictates the nature of the zones
that's pretty badass, because position dictates strength, but the actual locations are unpredictable turn-to-turn without expending points to potentially influence the vectors of the moving system
it seems like there's also a rich combinatorial structure:
Maelstrom condition where both sides get a boost from it, where only one side gets a boost, where neither side gets a boost. (or boosts vs. penalties if there are tokens that get either: benefit/neutral/penalty)
so Denizens are the NPCs
sounds like you're building a sim upon which an RTS is played--very cool
on at least 2 occasions I taught newbs Carcassonne even though I wasn't going to play... they saw an opportunity to tickle my didactic ego despite me not feeling like board games and they took it
(of course it depends on the audience. when I was a kid, I'd buy all these awesome strategy games from Avalon Hill, but they were always too complex for my friends to want to play. I think that's why I'm so obsessed with mechanics--my main engagement with those games was devouring and analyzing the rulesets!)
(I spent more time reading the Monster Manual than actually playing D&D for the same reasons')
by the way, for all of the victims of my future and past game design spam on here, the timebar is now called the Planner
I was kind of inspired by looking at a preview of Scythe, I like the idea of engine-building, but it felt like the +X Coin/turn was too spread out
I get... 1 per turn for my mech there.... and 2 per farm... oh and 2 more because X
I haven't played Scythe, and it may not even be like that, but it gave me something to build in opposition to... "no, it's all here, I'm the captain of a colony in a messed up world and my planner is all I have"
i'm grateful for the inspiration. All my personal focus is on [M] games, not just the direction of the mechanics themselves and future expressions, but now all the business and marketing aggravation--it's nice to take a break and think about other types of games
I spent 3 months thinking entirely about stability states, how they interact, and how to derive them efficiently, in an effort to reduce to the most generalized evaluation functions possible so they can be applied modularly and maintain replay variation
it was pure bliss, and yielded very useful insights
you can use it to move, attack, mine(whatever that means), build, etc
either way, screw what ore means, the idea is icons on the planner
and oh man, if people make their custom planners, like marking down various soldiers or structures or spells on their planner for ease of use next time
I win
I absolutely win in that case, because that will be an unmistakable proof of engagement with the game
they are no longer pretending to have a colony planner, they actually do
like someone coming with an RPG character sheet to your house
thinking someone has a denizen planner somewhere, they come to board game night, slap down the planner with all sorts of costs and spells already marked in it, and are ready to go... it gives me tingles
sure, you get to do about as much this turn, and next, and so on, but if some kind of maelstrom-repelling spell costs 5 AP, you're mega screwed for 4 turns
customise as in add extra info in accord with the game rules, I just used that as an example of engagement, they don't get to decide how much ore they get : ))
but the less they have to memorise, the better
for me it'd be easy to remember that 1 ore is 2 AP, and I can spread that cost however I want, but that may not make a lot of sense for a new player
(it's one of the things we have going for us with [M]. Nobody gets the implications of how the mechanics interact until they start playing. Then it becomes a revelatory experience as they begin to grok)
part of the reason I'm obsessed with Latin squares is they are great "differentiation engines". Sort of feels like your doing the same thing re: differentiation based on a single, core rule governing a gameplay element
I think I understand how the chart works. -If they want 2 ore for 1 AP, that takes 4 turns -If they want 1 ore for 2 AP, that takes 1 turn Is that correct?
because theoretically, if you're crippled for 4 turns, the only way he'd take a similar risk and turn the tables would be to cripple himself for 8 turns, so he could be going for a big thing as a response
this will keep things simpler since there is a phsyical representation of how many AP the players have, and they need to physically remove their resources for multiple turns
I basically want planning your turns to be an inherent part of the game mechanics
like some games add a traitor mechanic, or even betrayal(-1 points if you attack an enemy you're allied with) mechanic
planning is a mechanic
you're struggling against this chaotic world with the ultimate form of order: a cool notebook
so "I'm gonna send the horde around the maelstrom as soon as it dies down when my inhibitor finishes building" is not just going to be an awesome decision to make, but one that doesn't take a lot of mental overhead
you may not know how the game is going to look four turns ahead, definitely not the chaos in the middle, but at the very least you know how your resources are going to look, and by extension your colony
until that turns into a slick, immersion-inducing UX thing, it's my design goal
and as a game-dev thing, I think players voluntarily limiting their own options is a good thing
big plans remove big mental overhead... building a huge thing in 3 turns also means you have less to work with for 3 turns, so you can lay back a bit and do your best with half of your AP, which takes less thinking to do
I'm gonna take a break for now, but feel free to leave messages
and thank you so, so much for hanging around and giving me feedback
you guys are awesome
with your combinatorics and your paintjobs and everything, it's so great :D
