The two groups I play Pathfinder with, want to experiment with 5th edition. I've been reluctant - 3.5/Pathfinder was enjoyable for me. Lots of choices, methods of mastery...a lot to give up. Which isn't to say I never played 4th edition. I was in a regular game for several years with other expert gamers...but 4th felt like it was dumbed down, stripped of meaningful choices.
5th LOOKS a lot different than 4th, so my hopes were pretty high. It used longer words and longer sentences, showing it wasn't afraid of people actually reading. It had spell lists. Skills weren't entirely locked down to class choice. They pretty much nuked feats - they are difficult to get, as you have to give up your stat increases at 4/8/etc. The feats are more interesting/powerful, but...give up a +2? The book suggests that magic items to sell/for sale are very rare in the world...hard to completely embrace.
And the spell lists are sadly just the powers moved around to look like earlier editions. Eldritch Blast in 4th edition was a d10 at-will power. In 5th, it's a cantrip (not limited by casts) that is a d10 damage. Skills turn out to be all locked in at first level, split between your class choice and a background choice...background bit is nice, but...skills are locked in at first level just like in 4th. You will never become skilled in anything new.
4th edition tried to achieve a simple form of D&D, stripped down for easy consumption. This is what's kind of crazy about 5E - they took the 4E system, and re-skinned it to appear more verbose and retro to 3.5 and before. So, keep the simple system but retool it to make it feel complex. This is anti-elegance. The goal should be to have a complex system that feels very simple.
My ideal D&D game is something where players can choose their own mastery. Book of Nine Swords was AMAZING for 3.5. It made fighter types interesting to play, with different kinds of tricks and maneuvers that weren't tied to feats. I like seeing a variety of spells available for casters, so that the world isn't full of carbon copies...but each character build can be interesting and powerful in their own way. This is a function of rewarding competency...players feel good (and motivated) about playing their characters, and can look forward to how they might develop their characters in the future. (That is what you want - someone who identifies their actions into your game.)
I'll still give the 5th edition forays their chance. I've already crafted an unwilling priest to Umberlee, who has a folk hero background...saving the town from the ocean's fury. (But brought on by his doubting Umberlee's ability to wreck his village...now he needs to follow the course her servants lay down or his village and family is destroyed without being saved this time. What prophecy does the bitch queen of the sea need him for?)
Saturday, October 18, 2014
Friday, September 26, 2014
Random as catch-up...or not
A friend invited a bunch of us to help him playtest a game. I like it, because generally everyone can come up with SOME game they'd like to see made. This will probably become a fallback question that I use when meeting people. What game would you make?
The friend, he is heavy on analysis and generally anti-dice. I guessed correctly that there would be limited randomness (a stack of tiles), and would be driven by player brawls. (Brawl over race...it's not that much of a guess.)
Randomness can be a useful catchup mechanic. Look at it this way - if everything remained status quo, the current leader would win. The other players want some dynamic behavior to shake things up (hopefully in their favor).
In my friend's game, the leader is generally attacked directly by other players. This leads to plenty of see-saw action, but most of the mechanics are driven by money. Want to do X? Pay money. Want to do Y? Pay money. If you don't have money, you can't do actions...and it can be pretty debilitating. In some ways, similar to discard hand mechanics in trading card games. There's a reason why discard is feared as a mechanic. Create an imbalanced economy, the economy doesn't right itself.
His fix was to create an official 'dark horse' position. If you're doing extremely poorly, there is a point at which you get crazy discounts on all of your actions. Again, money. Money is everything, except at the end...and then you need the victory points from buildings that you purchased and still control. It's still got all of the makings of a good game - it's just not my ball of wax.
I shared a game that I am working on. (The other designer's final comment was "I was just trying to figure out how to reduce the randomness in your game." Bwhahaha.)
So I like some randomness. I like being able to choose my odds - maybe play risky if I'm behind, or even just to cement a win in the mid-game. Or just to have smidgens of good/bad luck to overcome. I don't want a game that is flip a coin, get a point for heads. I also don't want chess, where it's very static and players SHOULD paralyze themselves, thinking further ahead.
In currently named "Magic Masters", players start with somewhat random spells, based on the Talents that the players draft in the beginning. As apprentice wizards, they also have some dice that generate mana to cast spells (or research new ones). As the player explores the world and takes over locations, they gain more regular sources of magic as well as other trinkets/abilities. The tiles they explore are random (within the limits of "all are one of 5 elements", "all are octagons", "all can be entered from 4 directions", and "all have some location of interest where you can battle a creature to get something").
What's random?
The friend, he is heavy on analysis and generally anti-dice. I guessed correctly that there would be limited randomness (a stack of tiles), and would be driven by player brawls. (Brawl over race...it's not that much of a guess.)
Randomness can be a useful catchup mechanic. Look at it this way - if everything remained status quo, the current leader would win. The other players want some dynamic behavior to shake things up (hopefully in their favor).
In my friend's game, the leader is generally attacked directly by other players. This leads to plenty of see-saw action, but most of the mechanics are driven by money. Want to do X? Pay money. Want to do Y? Pay money. If you don't have money, you can't do actions...and it can be pretty debilitating. In some ways, similar to discard hand mechanics in trading card games. There's a reason why discard is feared as a mechanic. Create an imbalanced economy, the economy doesn't right itself.
His fix was to create an official 'dark horse' position. If you're doing extremely poorly, there is a point at which you get crazy discounts on all of your actions. Again, money. Money is everything, except at the end...and then you need the victory points from buildings that you purchased and still control. It's still got all of the makings of a good game - it's just not my ball of wax.
I shared a game that I am working on. (The other designer's final comment was "I was just trying to figure out how to reduce the randomness in your game." Bwhahaha.)
So I like some randomness. I like being able to choose my odds - maybe play risky if I'm behind, or even just to cement a win in the mid-game. Or just to have smidgens of good/bad luck to overcome. I don't want a game that is flip a coin, get a point for heads. I also don't want chess, where it's very static and players SHOULD paralyze themselves, thinking further ahead.
In currently named "Magic Masters", players start with somewhat random spells, based on the Talents that the players draft in the beginning. As apprentice wizards, they also have some dice that generate mana to cast spells (or research new ones). As the player explores the world and takes over locations, they gain more regular sources of magic as well as other trinkets/abilities. The tiles they explore are random (within the limits of "all are one of 5 elements", "all are octagons", "all can be entered from 4 directions", and "all have some location of interest where you can battle a creature to get something").
What's random?
- Tile exploration (you can reduce some of the randomness by taking the Explorer talent)
- Mana dice (you can reduce some of the randomness by conquering elemental nodes, finding familiars, using certain magic items)
- Combat (it'll get its own post, but your spells use dice to determine if the spell hits or not...and each spell has different combat speeds and different combinations of dice to resolve combat)
- Quests come from a constrained deck, as do monsters. The quests are broken up by difficulty - you won't be taking a Tier 3 quest until the end of the game, but the Tier 1 quests are all roughly even.
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
Kings & Things (1986)
Today, we will time travel back 28 years to when Kings & Things had just come out from West End Games.
There are a lot of chits, but that's pretty normal. The board is interesting - you deal out a series of mostly random hexes of various terrain types face-up so that every game is different.
The goal of the game is to build the first citadel, with no one else building one the same turn. If someone else does, the first person to capture a citadel wins.
The turn looks like this, where everyone completes a step before going onto the next.
Let's briefly talk about chits - there's gold chits and fortress chits in the bank. There's a limited number of special mercenaries to hire. Then there's the CUP. It has treasures, chits that are added to hexes to increase income, event chits, magic item chits, and mostly monster chits.
The monster chits have 3 values - the terrain type they are supported by, a combat value (sometimes including a first-striking or double-striking notation), and possibly flying. These monster chits start face-down until they are forced to reveal through combat or blocking - if you don't own the supporting terrain type, it dies...until then, it's a bluff.
Combat is simple - the monster value is 1-6, and you have to roll on or below it to do a hit. During combat, each player lines up their creatures and rolls dice for each combat speed category - Magic, then Missile, then Melee. You roll a hit, it removes one chit from your opponent's spread. Everyone resolves their Magic before going into Missile, etc.
There is light exploration in the beginning - any hex not controlled by a player has random chits added. 1 & 6 mean no chits, while 2-5 is that many chits.
Money is so completely important, that it drives the game. You can buy extra chit draws, increase your chances of hiring special mercenaries, bribe NPC chits into leaving, and increase your fortresses (giving you income and more defenses).
Therefore, where you spend your money is where players go in different directions. If you spread out and capture lots of hexes, you'll have more monster-types supported...but maybe more fragile when it comes to holding turf. You can build up fortresses, but then you're giving space to other players (but you need a citadel and an income of 20 to win the game). And buying chits - well, you don't know what you'll get. Let's guess at least 120 different chits in the cup.
It's not a tremendously deep game, but the combat is fast and there's enough going on that it doesn't feel like you're flipping a coin. I'll play it when my friend Rob brings it over.
There are a lot of chits, but that's pretty normal. The board is interesting - you deal out a series of mostly random hexes of various terrain types face-up so that every game is different.
The goal of the game is to build the first citadel, with no one else building one the same turn. If someone else does, the first person to capture a citadel wins.
The turn looks like this, where everyone completes a step before going onto the next.
- Collect your income (basically your hexes, special chits, and strengths of fortresses)
- Try to hire special mercenaries *
- Draw chits from the cup (number of draws = hexes/2) *
- Add monster chits to your hexes as your troops
- Play an event chit (optional)
- Move any/all of your monster/mercenary chits
- Battle *
- Build up fortresses - Towers to Keeps to Castles to Citadels *
Let's briefly talk about chits - there's gold chits and fortress chits in the bank. There's a limited number of special mercenaries to hire. Then there's the CUP. It has treasures, chits that are added to hexes to increase income, event chits, magic item chits, and mostly monster chits.
The monster chits have 3 values - the terrain type they are supported by, a combat value (sometimes including a first-striking or double-striking notation), and possibly flying. These monster chits start face-down until they are forced to reveal through combat or blocking - if you don't own the supporting terrain type, it dies...until then, it's a bluff.
Combat is simple - the monster value is 1-6, and you have to roll on or below it to do a hit. During combat, each player lines up their creatures and rolls dice for each combat speed category - Magic, then Missile, then Melee. You roll a hit, it removes one chit from your opponent's spread. Everyone resolves their Magic before going into Missile, etc.
There is light exploration in the beginning - any hex not controlled by a player has random chits added. 1 & 6 mean no chits, while 2-5 is that many chits.
Money is so completely important, that it drives the game. You can buy extra chit draws, increase your chances of hiring special mercenaries, bribe NPC chits into leaving, and increase your fortresses (giving you income and more defenses).
Therefore, where you spend your money is where players go in different directions. If you spread out and capture lots of hexes, you'll have more monster-types supported...but maybe more fragile when it comes to holding turf. You can build up fortresses, but then you're giving space to other players (but you need a citadel and an income of 20 to win the game). And buying chits - well, you don't know what you'll get. Let's guess at least 120 different chits in the cup.
It's not a tremendously deep game, but the combat is fast and there's enough going on that it doesn't feel like you're flipping a coin. I'll play it when my friend Rob brings it over.
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