ThroughTheWell wrote:Any chance of duplicating the facebook info elsewhere for those of us who have FB blocked at work?
Ugh, I hate facebook. Once the Kickstarter is live we will use that as a landing page for our information and updates. We'll still use facebook because it's sorta the "thing" to use in this day and age, but I'll make sure we keep as much as physically possible elsewhere. If I need to setup something here, I may just use the forums as an alternate. Who knows.
ThroughTheWell wrote:And I 2nd LSN's blank card idea. A blank card in the game, gives players an immediate way to be creative. And they can use a copier on the blank or scan it in for more before they use it. Online digital templates could expand that creativity by a lot, though making it hard to match the cards to the game exactly (we are not talking standard printer paper for cards).
/me scribbles furiously....
mmhmm, go on...
/me mumbles something about ducks
ThroughTheWell wrote:Oh, I heard the sword Oblivious was in the game... so how is it that Oblivious works without Minmax to originate it and unquestioningly reach through time due to his ignorance? In other words, as cool as it is, I thought there was some Minmax to the origin and power instead of just having touched an oblivion hole.
Oblivious is at a strange point. We really want to do it justice. Because like you said, it has a looooot of strange rules associated with it. I'm still figuring out how to capture the card without it being just one huge wall of text. If we can't get it right, we may have to hold off on it until we do. I refuse to do something without it being absolutely spot on. I mean, to do the shield of Wonder justice we're created 100 extra cards for the game. Now I hope that Oblivious doesn't need that same level of "over the top," but who knows.
A version we had was that it has a *huge* combat boost, but it gets weaker the more ingenuity the person who is holding it has. So in a sense, the smarter you are, the weaker the sword. That really doesn't do it right though, so I'm not sure that's quite nailing it. And I saw Tarol's tweet that oblivious can't be stolen, which is another curve ball we'll have to work out. So who knows where it will end up. Good question, and one i'm still working hard on answering!
Calemor wrote:More game mechanic questions (as LoneStarNorth predicted, I love delving into the mechanics of games so I can create my own stuff!):
On your turn, if someone is winning an encounter, can you only stop them if your party is in the same area? I heard you were thinking about bumping the number of areas from 4 to 6 (Thunt spoils many things). How will this affect how much teams can affect each other?
Nope, you can oppose (or ally with) the active party all the time.
It sounds like the rules Tarol was explaining (with party movement) are currently slated as alternate rules. The way the game will work is that all parties are at any location, so there is no limit on who can team up with who. Since we've had the party movement proposal on the table we haven't had enough time to test it and really iron out what it adds (and doesn't add) to the game. The cards are all designed in such a way it can work either way, so we plan on testing both ways and figuring out what works best.
In the end, we really wanted the ally and oppose system to be a big part of the strategy in the game. I didn't want player movement to get into the way of that too much, so there is a trade off to consider there there.
As for extra locations, Right now the core game has 4 settings.
Calemor wrote:Speaking of turns, what's the breakdown of a turn? Does every turn involve facing an encounter (somewhat like kicking down the door in Munchkin), or can you choose other actions?
Munchkin? What's munchkin?
No, it's nothing like kicking down the door. Well it's sorta like kicking down the door in that you do it every turn. But other than that, it's not like it.
The turn order for each party's turn is broken into two phases: Preparation Phase (Do any preparation-y things before the encounter) and Encounter Phase (Choose an encounter).
Now the encounter phase is huge and has a lot of things going on in it. Players can ally with you, players can oppose you and challenge your party. The active party then tries to complete the encounter. Treasure gets looted, the whole nine yards. Encounters act as a sort of backdrop for all the in party fighting and bickering that goes on between players, so every turn you and your allies show up at an encounter and if you are unlucky you may have to challenge a few enemies before you get to move on.
Calemor wrote:And on a more general note, how does the ending of a game feel? The game as a whole seems like it can be great at telling fun alternate reality stories, but the game ends sort of randomly whenever a player gets rid of their last quest token. What have you done to make the ending of each game (if possible) feel epic and climactic?
Well let me say I hate the end of munchkin games. It suffers from a real problem in that the only way the player doesn't win is for all the other players to sorta stare at eachother until somebody goes "I guess i'll do something." The reason for that is it actually hurts you in Munchkin to stop another player. You have to play cards and you get nothing back for opposing. It's annoying. It's goofy and silly, don't get me wrong, but annoying. And ultimately every game of Munchkin ends the same way: 3 or 4 players try to win, and get crapped all over by the other players until someone finally squeaks out the win after everyone has used all their nasty hateful cards. Hardly climatic.
Now on the other hand, the end of Goblins should be much cooler. Since quest tokens can be cleared through different actions, even when it's not your turn, it's possible to win at any time. Now like munchkin it's really obvious when someone is about to win. You can see as their quest token pile shrinks. This raises the stakes and tensions around the table. People stop helping you and start opposing you. It's great to watch the game transition. At the start of the game, players are more keen to help. There is a lot in it for them to help. Their characters get XP, they might level up, they can even get quest tokens for helping other players. But as the game wears on, it gets really interesting how players will try to jocky to complete their quests.
The most common quest goal is to overcome a certain encounter type. So most characters are trying to beat encounters. But some characters are trying to win challenges. So you'll have Kore who is running around and his quest is to win Combat Challenges. So if he's on the board, players are trying to figure out "how do I complete my quest, without Kore coming and smashing my face in and stealing the victory?" And unlike munchkin, once a player gets really close to winning, it actually helps everyone to team up against them at once. So it's not one player who has to "do the dirty work", everyone can try to team up and stop you. Forming one huge enemy party for the last encounter. And since each player can send one challenger, To win the game you might have to win 3 or 4 challenges and then still have enough gas in the tank to beat an encounter.
And that doesn't even count the fact that as the game goes on, characters get stronger and the stakes are higher in general. Especially combat challenges. Not many games like this have it so you can flat out lose a character, and there is nothing as epic or climatic as characters dying mid game.
I could go on, but it's pretty cool.
Calemor wrote:Thanks for indulging a budding game designer!
Game designers are the best designers.