Reliquary Prototype 2 almost done

I had the day off today and decided to push my way through implementing all my ideas into Prototype 2 to make it playtestable tonight with Shane. Unfortunately I ran out of time, so instead of play testing i'll just write up a post about where I'm at and hopefully I can get a game in very soon.

DUNGEON BOARD

This is my first stab at distributing the experience resources around the map. One issue with Proto 1 was that there was no reason to move around the board. Now that I have eliminated standard "experience" for skill map progression and substituted it with various colored relic requirements the player will have to move around to gather the colors they require.

Every space with a color on it is a fighting location, and every gray space is a non-fighting space. When in a non-fight space you can upgrade on the skill map, draw cards, heal X amount and regen X focus. Not all on the same turn, but I think you will always get to draw cards and upgrade.

When you beat a monster on a fight location you can choose to take one of the two colors on the space if they are horizontal, and you take all of the colors if they are vertical or if there are three. I know its not rotation safe yet, thats on my short list to fix.

CHARACTER SHEET

This is quite similar to the last version I posted, with the big difference being the cut up colors on the skill map. Now you are required to get all of the shown colors in a given circle in order to upgrade into the location. In order to drop a permanent skill token I am thinking it will cost 2 of any relic color.

MONSTER AND DUNGEON CARDS

The monster cards and dungeon cards are for the most part the same as Proto 1, just digital instead of my chicken scratch. The only real difference is instead of spending experience to play dungeon cards, players now spend Focus. In addition the monsters reward a player for killing them with X focus as well as the colored relic that is printed on the main map.

So all I really have to do is print and cut all this out, as well as fix the rotational confusion of the dungeon board, and it'll be ready for play testing. My main tester, Shane, is out of town for 2 weeks starting wednesday so I might be trying to enlist other friends for this task soon :)

Reliquary Character Sheet progress

I had a couple interesting ideas yesterday (see previous brain dump post) and decided that I'd try and implement some of them today since I had the day off.

Its suprising how much time even small parts of this can take, but I'm really excited about the new aspects i'm bringing in. The biggest thing I worked on today was separating the actual modifiers from the skill map, and then associating them with three new stats which track them. It took a LONG time to come up with a decent way to show all this one one 8 x 11 piece of paper and have it have some semblance of coherence. All the circles are sized to fit a penny, since that is still my main token at the moment. Click on the image for a larger version if you are having trouble reading it.

You can see how this solved another problem I had, how do I specify what the MAX health is while also having a current health track? have two tracks? Yuck. Well i just integrated it into the new Defense skill track so you can see where your current max is. This worked great for the damage and focus amounts as well.

This is completely unplayed yet of course, so balance is probably totally off. I did try and take a stab at making it give a player who heads in a more defensive route more gains HP wise then if they went damage. This is mostly due to damage seeming to be a much more effective stat in ending fights early.

I hope to fill in most of the stat blanks with good stuff. The Wisdom line will for sure get some some more love since it's pretty barren. I tried to make it all work out so that someone will have to go deep into one area of the Skill map twice in order to even get close to maxing out that stat.

I was hoping to add in some starting items like weapons for Prototype 2 but I'm starting to think I need to reduce the scope and test out the new additions. I have already decided that weapons will add dice rolls, so Proto 2 might end up being dice-less if I indeed don't integrate any weapons.

I spent a little time working on a digital game board, and this is where I'm at so far.

Reliquary Brain Dump

• Skill map no longer adds to actual modifiers like Damage or Health. Instead it will increase attributes, currently going with the super original "Defense", "Strength", and "Wisdom". Then have a progression track on those three skills, putting modifiers like damage and health on them at various levels. This allows me to cap progression so someone doesn't run away with a crazy amount of HP or damage, plus should make balancing a tad easier.
• Looking into ditching raw numerical experience as the skill map progression resource. Instead the various fight locations on the dungeon map will state what color relics they give when you defeat the random monster there. You will need various combinations of these relics to progress on the Skill map. This will create a reason to traverse most of the dungeon map instead of camping on location for experience. Plus this might later open up module based dungeons with somewhat random distribution of relic color locations.
• Thinking about changing the old exp generation into a new "Focus" resource. This will be purely for card play and various monsters will give various amounts of it as a reward for killing them.

Skill Map update

I have decided to move everything into the digital realm from now on, my hand drawing skill is horrible and its just not conducive to the constant changes created by development.

Below is my first take at the Skill Map for Prototype 2. It has more nodes then Proto 1 but i'm ok with that. I spread out skills much better this time, with only the final skill nodes having a single skill increase. But each of them will come with a special ability that they unlock. The abilities currently in there are really placeholders, theres no rules associated with them yet.

Reliquary Prototype 1 Play test 1

PROTOTYPE 1

I spent about 6 hours yesterday scrambling to get the first playable prototype of Reliquary ready. I was meeting up with Shane around 9:30 and wanted to have the first play test that night.

Below is the details of gameplay for Prototype 1, then i'll get into the actual play test and notes. I apologize for the crappy resolution of the images, they were all made with my 2megabit phone camera.

Dungeon Map

This is the dungeon map and it's the most uninspired part of the game so far. I literally drew out the concentric circles, wrote in the fighting spots with little thought that was pretty much it. It looks boring, and it WAS boring. Prototype 2 will see a lot more thought put into the dungeon map itself.

Players start out on either town slot, this is the location you go to when you die. The blank slots were essentially "Card draw" locations. every turn a player could chose to move his piece one spot, or stay in their location. If it was an inner circle white space then you could also choose to regen 2 HP as a third option. If they ended on a bank then they drew a card. If they ended on a "fight" then they drew the appropriate type of monster and fought it. The only exception was the "shrines" which are on the very top and bottom of the outermost circle. These were put on with little thought as well, and when on a shrine location you could draw a card OR heal up to your HP max.

The Cards

I developed three different tiers of monsters. One stack of 9 weak monsters which you draw from when ending your turn on the outermost circle's "fight" locations. The cards were made by writing the monster stats on a piece of paper, then slipping a Rebel Alliance card from the old Star Wars CCG plus the slip of paper into a penny sleeve to give it some bulk. All the weak monsters were rebel alliance cards so you could easily tell which stack is which from behind (and cause the alliance is full of pansies). I balanced the weak cards so that it was impossible for any of them to kill a character on the first turn. This means they really are quite weak, but dying due to a bad luck card draw on the first turn is something I want to absolutely prohibit.

Another stack of 9 harder monsters which were associated with the inner circle. These were put with Empire cards due to their awesomeness.

Then one last really hard monster who I called the "Relic Guardian" who was always what you fight in the very center, and also happened to be the end game winning condition upon beating it.

The last type of card was "Dungeon Cards" which i put in with magic cards to diferentiate:

I am very excited about this idea I came up with, obviously influenced by parts of many other games i've played (mostly Tomb Crypt master and Android at the moment). Every dungeon card has a top and bottom, the top helping the player who plays the card, the bottom being a detrimental effect targeting an opponent. The cost to play the card was EXP, so there was alot of analysis on whether using it was worth the cost in the end after a monster was killed (or in preventing the opponent from getting exp from a monster). I made it so that all very expensive pros had very cheap cons on the same card, and vice versa. This way you hypothetically never had a card that was useless to you due to costing too much. You could always use the cheap side and hurt your opponent for example.

Combat

Combat is relatively simple, and in line with my eventual goal of attrition based fighting. First opponents have the opportunity to pay EXP against you, then you can play a card from your hand to help yourself before combat. Limit of one Con card and one Pro card per combat. The effects of the cards lasted all combat rounds this turn. Damage is done simultaneously through multiple rounds until either the player is dead or the monster is. The starting stats for each player are 6 HP, 1 Dam, and 1 D6 dice roll. The dice roll was for a potential additional damage, and was a hit on a 3-6. I added in dice to add some excitement to the game, I don't want it to merely be number crunching. So each round the character will do at least 1 damage to the monster, and a potential additional damage. The monster does its damage back even if it dies this round. This way even if your character is completely awesome later in game, a 2 HP 1 dam creature will still hit you for 1 which can add up.

I had no rule for what happens when both the monster and player kill each other on the same turn. Shane and I discussed it and decided that if the player "overkills" the monster by doing at least 1 more damage then it has health left then the player will survive combat with 1 HP and get all the EXP. If they do not overkill then both the monster and player dies, and the player gets the EXP before the half exp penalty on death was instituted. We also decided that at any point mid combat the player can choose to flee the battle. The penalty for this was going down to 1 HP and having to discard a card from their hand. As you can see there was alot of mid-game developing going on, mostly due to me not working on the rules much before the game and instead focusing on the components.

Player Character Sheets

This is where I spent most of the development time for Prototype 1. The Player sheet has the Skill Map which is the core mechanic behind the entire game, and then a bunch of stat keepers so you know where you are at without having to add it up again by moving our Skill Map tokens around.

The player starts with a dime on the central location of the Skill Map. There is a key to the side of it but it's hard to read. Moving your dime to a white skill slot costs 2 exp, yellow skill slot is 6 exp, green skill slot is 8 exp, and blue skill slot is 10 exp. There are three themes to the skill map depending on which direction you go. One is gaining more HP and protection from monsters, one is gaining more damage and attack die, and the last is gaining more EXP from monster kills. Placing a permanent upgrade skill token down where you already are costs an additional 10 exp, but this allows you to keep the skill slot while moving your dime elsewhere. Shane came up with a great idea before we started playing that when you place a permanent skill token, it warps your dime back to the center. This is sort of a penalty so that you are essentially saying you are "done" with that section when you place a permanent token, but it gives you a head start into the cheap skills for a new direction.

Rules Conclusion

The game ended when one player was able to defeat the Relic Guardian, and thus take the Relic....and win! The theme is pretty deep at this point, I know. Honestly about half of the above rules were made on the fly while playing or right before starting due to my focusing on getting all the materials ready for the Play Test. I literally started making the dungeon cards an hour and 15 minutes before I left for Shanes house. Here is a picture of what it all looked like mid-game:

PLAY TEST 1

After discussing the rules for almost an hour, Shane and I decided to start the game. Since both players start with 3 EXP, he used 2 of this to immediately head in the +Dam direction of the skill map. I also wanted to do this, but in the interest of testing I decided to try heading in the +HP direction instead.

We were neck and neck for most of the game despite going in different directions, my larger HP pool did a pretty good job of counter acting my very weak attack. Likewise his heavy damage killed monsters quicker and therefore he went through less combat rounds and was able to survive with less HP. At some point we both died during the game, though the penalty of losing half of your EXP seemed like nothing considering we were almost alway at or close to Zero due to there bieng so many EXP dumps in place. I didn't realize how powerful 2/3 hitting dice would be, and once Shane was able to pick up the SKill that was +1 Dam, +5 Dice in combat the game swiftly shifted in his position. I made that spot waaaay too powerful but thats what testing is about I suppose.

To counter act this I dropped a permanent token giving me lots of HP and a little damage and immediately headed in the +exp direction. I hoped that killing little things for huge exp with the bonus could counteract his disturbing damage. I figured i would have lots of EXP to play big mean dungeon cards to cause him to die more often. Unfortunately I ran into one bit issue with Proto 1, and that is it was actually quite hard to GET cards into your hand. The best spots on the board were next to the shrines. Then you would run into the inner circle, barely survive but get bit EXP and then run back and regen up on the shrine...but not draw a card.

In the end Shane made a blitz for the end boss. I dropped a pretty bad card on him, but he managed to survive despite the odds being against him with a particularly good dice roll. I'm OK this that little bit of randomness though, it caused there to be a ton of tension and was quite fun in the end. Plus it was my fault for creating that ludicrously overpowered skill on the map! and then not getting it myself! bah.

But it was a big success in my mind, it played in about 2 hours even with all the constant stops for debate over rule variations etc. Plus we both agreed we had a lot of fun and the game is going in a great direction. There is a long way to go of course.

NOTES AND THOUGHTS

Below is a list of points I wrote down during and after the game to be addressed with Prototype 2.

- The dungeon cards are too expensive! Both Shane and myself spent most of the game not playing most of our hand due to it not being worth the EXP loss. We spent the majority of the post-game discussion talking about how to work on this. Ultimately we decided that a new type of currency is required for card play to be more effective. I want cards to be played all the time, but still have strategic and difficult decisions associated with them. We discussed three options most:

1. Having a new currency (lets call it energy) that you generate at a rate of 1 a turn or 1 a kill. This seems awkward to me though, and it will still be hard to get big cards out due to having to wait a while.
2. Blatantly ripping off Android and having a good/bad meter where cons push it in one direction and pros push it in the other. This mechanic is elegant, and I am very interested in it but am worried of the moral repercussions of blatantly copying it.
3. Having all cards also have a discard value on them (like descent) which discounts the EXP cost of playing a different card. Crap this is a copy too...

- There needs to be more opportunities to draw cards on the game map.

- The game board simply needs to be made much more interesting

- Shrines should be tucked farther out of the way so players can't pop back and forth between battles and full heals.

- Death penalty of half exp or even all exp seems to be too light, this might change after changing the card play resource. Thinking about adding in card loss to death penalty.

- Dice hit WAY too often. for now I need to change them to 50/50 hits.

- Maybe add mini-bosses to unlock deeper levels

- Homogenize skill upgrade types throughout the entire Skill Map so characters don't become so one dimensional (all damage no Health, all exp no damage or health, etc.)

CONCLUSION

Holy crap this turned into a long write up.

Holy crap I have a lot of work to do!

Leave comments if you have any ideas or suggestions at any time please :)

Reliquary brain dump

This is just a small list of things running through my head for later integration:

• Game end condition is going to be killing one big bad guy in the center of the map. It will have X number of lieutenants to kill first, X equaling the number of players in the game. Player who kills it first wins.
• I want to have a monster deck for each level of the player board, so that they get harder as a player ventures further. I also want a "modifier" deck that will be drawn with each monster that will adjust its abilities slightly to keep them from getting totally predictable.
• The detrimental part of the dungeon cards will have a couple XP costs to play. They will be quite expensive when played on characters in the newb areas of the board, and get much cheaper to play against a player who is almost near the end.

Project Reliquary introduction

This isn't the first game i've attempted to develop, but its by far the most ambitious so I have decided to use this blog to try and keep me on track.

This project is starting out with the code-name Reliquary, it is suitable considering this game at its core will be an adventure style dungeon crawl.

WHY?

I decided to start fleshing out some of my ideas into an adventure game after being frustrated too many times with similar games that didn't seem to have what I was looking for. Either the game would be too random and it felt like a glorified game of "war", the game would be overly complex to the point of zero immersion, or it simply wasn't fun for everyone to play. Usually it was a couple of these issues.

I really want to play an adventure game where I start with a regular character and build him over time (not too long, i'm thinking 1.5-2 hours), where there is a minor amount of randomness but the overall winner will find themselves in their position mostly due to skillful game play. After continuing to find games, try them, and be disappointed I figured I might as well see if I can do better. I'm already finding out why this genre is so hard...

BRASS TACKS

So what are the over riding themes I require and what are the pitfalls I am attempting to avoid?

• Skill based success with minor randomness to keep things fresh and not 100% predictable
• Have a real sense of improvement of one's character over the game, and have that progression be guided by the player.
• Minimal item usage, and minimal "special rules" for various items. I want the book keeping in this game to be minimal. I don't want a character who is about to win to be so glutted with weapons, armor, spells, and abilities that it takes 30 seconds before every battle just to figure out how much attack damage they do.
• Reasonable play time of 1.5 - 2 hours.
• Keep everyone in the game, and those who lose still have a good time. I am essentially trying to avoid the biggest problem I see with Descent, where when the overlord wins it is anticlimactic and everyone else usually feels more disappointed then satisfied in a good gaming experience.
• Keep player interaction high. I don't want this to be multiplayer solitaire where characters barely acknowledge each other as they plunder the game board.

WHERE I'M AT

So far I have some initial sketches and ideas about the character progression and dunegeon boards. I'll explain them here:

This entire project started in an instant while I was brain-wandering on a drive home from game night. I suddenly thought that it would be really cool to have a character progression matrix which could be customized by the player. The first thought was a tetris like layout, and a grid. Where they could try and fit various abilities and upgrades into this matrix but obviously not everything would all go together, so they would have to choose. I relatively quickly moved on to a different idea that is far from original. I've played my share of Final Fantasy games, and it occurred to me that the "skill maps" that FFX etc used could be quite easily used in a board gaming environment. It would of course be no where near as complex.

Below is a sketch I made with a dime (odd that it came out non-silver) and a very basic skill map. Ultimately I would like it to be one tier bigger, but for now I am trying to keep everything as simple as possible in order to get to alpha play testing.

The character will start out with just his skill map token (map token for short). They move the map token around by spending experience which they have gathered through slaying monsters and maybe other mechanisms. I imagine they will start with enough XP to move to one of the three first options before the game even begins. Each end point on the skill map will provide a very nice attribute to the character who got there, my initial idea is the three themes will be strenth, dexterity, and magic (SUPER creative and out of the box, i know!). The other middle skill spots will all offer some sort of benefit to the character depending on how far away from the center they are. This will be static improvements to things like attack power or defense that will be adjusted on the player sheet when attained. This way the player doesn't have to keep recalculating what their skill map is telling them.

The really cool part I am most excited about all this is the ability to drop stagnant tokens along the way. It would cost a good chunk of XP but the player can then leave a stagnant token in one of the regions while their map token can move elsewhere. This would allow them to keep their progress in one direction while then working towards a different progression area with the mobile starting map token. The player would have difficult decisions to make about whether they want to push to the final upgrade or just buy a stagnant token and start working elsewhere and get two benefits instead of one big one. I imagine this will be a balancing nightmare! oh well, its too cool not to try.

The other part that i've worked on so far is the main dungeon board. It is not very inspired at the moment. I am thinking about one large outer ring with reletively low level creatures to kill and things to accomplish with obviously low level rewards. The farther you delve down the concentric circles the harder things get but the better the rewards are. In the center maybe there will be a really big bad guy? I'm really not sure at the moment. One thing I know is that I don't want to seed the board like Prophecy or Tomb. I am thinking that certain spaces will activate certain types of events. Maybe one spot will be a "crypt" and every time you go there a random crypt like monster (mummy, skeleton, ghost, etc) will be drawn from a stack for you to defeat.

The last thing I have put some thought towards is the player interaction. I want everyone to be participating at all times, not dozing off while other people are taking their turns. However I don't like the idea of player vs player combat since this usually helps a runaway leader more then it hurts them. My current idea is that everyone will have access to a kind of card which they will keep in their hand. Every card will be dual-purposed, with one beneficial effect for the current player and one detrimental effect to an opponent (they can only use it for one or the other). Each will have a cost in XP (i want there to be only one resource for the whole game) and maybe even have some discounts if the detrimental effect is targeting someone who is the "strongest", however i might define that.

HOW DOES IT END?

I have no solid ideas at the moment. I am wary to go the "Victory Points" route, so it might be an "acquire X number of Y to end the game total, the one with the most wins". Time will tell.

Let me know if you have any comments, this is still very early on in the Dev process but all criticism is appreciated :)