StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Those rogues over at Board Game Geek haven't replied to my post, so I figured I'd throw it here too. I'm designing the Delve Deeper board game, based on the already rather tabletop video game of Delve Deeper--and having trouble coming up with meaningful and fun benefits to assign each of the player-controlled Guilds. Each player is a Representative of one dwarven Guild, and you're all been volunteered to work on this expedition to a cursed mountain. The guilds are designed to make a sensible team and be able to function no matter if it's a 2 or a 5 player game, so I can't make any one Guild too essential to the flow. That's fine, no troubles there, but now that all the rules are written up I'm looking for interesting ways to bend or break those rules to make each faction's theme stronger.

They've already got roles they perform in a "natural" way, but I really think upgrades and special abilities add a lot of flair (and the excitement of putting a plan into action) where otherwise each faction is mostly just a different color.

Here's a simple example: Like if the Mining Guild player gets a benefit that drops their tunnel construction cost from 4 to 2, then they can reasonable negotiate to do tunneling for other Guilds for 3: a profit for the Miners and a savings for everyone else.

This alters the economy somewhat (and means you discard less gold, and instead invest it in another player) and gives people new dynamics to work around. The game is only semi-cooperative so they need to decide who is benefitting the most from this situation, and if they can afford not to work with the Miners, who might get cranky if you don't... etc.

But I'm kinda inventing this as I go. Right now I've been "gamemastering" the sessions and doing on-the-fly write-in special powers, and I'm trying to see where people prefer their factions to go. Nothing is definitive so far though, and I feel like I'll exhaust my current stock of testers if they keep having to play with a half-finished faction to control, you know?

Are there any games that do pre-made factions well? I've been doing some light playtests and would love to release a Print-n-Play version to get feedback, but I feel like I can't really do that without the factions having their bits on.

Also, I've had some questions arise while thinking about this:

1) How many special powers are the right amount for players to juggle personally, and how many can you "remember" so that the abilities of your allies don't keep slipping your mind? If each faction gets 1 benefit that seems small, but 10 would clearly be way too many.

2) Would players prefer just one "faction bonus" that they upgrade or a few different powers that they can get in any order? The second is more flexible and maybe more fun, but requires other players to remember each power you have.

3) Do players prefer active powers or passive powers? I prefer active powers myself--feels more energetic--but I know a lot of games work almost entirely off a basis of passive upgrades.

Speaking of which, these abilities are added onto your Guild during the game. Right now the mechanic used to do this is getting the Expedition authorities to authorize a new Work Permit for your Guild. This is done by getting your rivals to vote yes on the authorization. Simply put, you'll have to convince them that the overall efforts will be better, or that it will help you solve some looming crisis, or you'll have to buy their votes the old fashioned way.

This is a lot of fun, I think, and makes upgrades less about sinking a lot of resources and more about agreeing to let an ally get more powerful. In a semi-cooperative game with a lot of negotiation and social aspects, I think it's a great fit. But it also means if an ability is really selfish or obviously combative then nobody will vote for it.

Which is fine, in a way--it could be your capstone ability, only authorized if you can really twist some arms or if some group of players feel you'll help balance out someone else. It's an escalation, essentially. I love escalation mechanics.

But yeah, I think that's basically all the info regarding this. I'm just kinda stuck with the details about what to give the factions. I hate dull bonuses, I like things that feel unique and fun, like a new toy. But I don't want to overwhelm players. I know there's got to be games that've paved this way, but I'm not aware of them.

I'd say three or so bonuses would probably good. Ten screams minor and meaningless or an overcomplex game. Three should be pretty easy to keep track of especially if each player has a card with three spots on it to keep track of it that everyone can look at quickly. This is pretty much me guessing. I would say that if it's only one bonus, it'd have to be something that has deep ramifications for a good deal of different things, and I don't know if your game has that sort of thing in it.

I'd say one to three bonuses or powers, some active some passive. Enough that you could even choose a faction with all or mostly passive, or active. If only one bonus it needs to be powerful. For 2 I'd say that I generally prefer a few powers in any order, but that's just my opinion.

Actually, one thing that might be worth considering. If you're talking about getting powers in play, it might be worth considering having one or two more than a player can be reasonably expected to get. That keeps choice in the perk selection and would hopefully increase the longevity of the game as factions can play differently between games in more ways. This would put more burden on your balancing abilities though.

Good feedback! I like the idea of fewer abilities than more, it's certainly easier to keep things feeling tight when you have less to juggle. You also don't need to remember a billion other powers on the board at once.

Having more powers than you can reasonably be expected to get is something I like as well. If we have 4 powers then one of those should be a power you are unlikely to get, and 1-3 that are more likely to be obtained throughout average play. If unlocking a third power is a bit of an accomplishment and most games end with you only having 2-3 of them, then unlocking a fourth is a real coup.

I think powerful passives are great capstone abilities. Getting an upgrade that makes you just flat-out better is a bit dull (and often mandatory) for a basic ability, but as a "end of the ability tree" ability it can be a great way to round out everything else, as well as give a meaningful bit of progression that feels like icing on the cake. It lets you face off against everything else with more confidence, and it establishes a goal to shoot for at the end, as well as a bonus that does not change the way you play (which is unfortunate and delays the real reason you're playing that faction).

link to boardgamegeek thread? I may as well replay with my design hat on

madd0ct0r wrote:link to boardgamegeek thread? I may as well replay with my design hat on

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1243477 ... cooperativ

The post is probably too long for BGG, but I figured it'd be better to give all the info needed than give a nibblet and then get off-mark commentary.

Most semi-coops actually have only a small handful of abilities per faction - sometimes having as few as one per faction - for the reason that semi-coops tend to be problematic from the design perspective to begin with when one or more players decide to go the "embargo" route and try to have everyone fail when they get so far behind in the pointage rather than try to catch up. The small number of abilities helps keep balancing relatively even for everyone.

Would you also have a quick summary of the core mechanics and concepts of your game, as feedback will be very limited without a general understanding of what particular mechanics that the game revolves around. Rex, which a BBGer recommended to you, is for instance very centered around bidding mechanics.

Sure thing Zinegata.

I'll also be releasing the rules into the wild in a Print and Play format as soon as I can.

The game is a semi-cooperative social strategy game that puts players in the seats of Guild Representatives as an Expedition to a cursed mountain sets its sights on rebuilding the city and gathering up all that lost treasure. Unfortunately the Expedition was a bit of a rush job so you're not given the support you need to do the job easily, and the overseeing Thane is a pompous greedy windbag. Making things more complicated for you is that the King himself has given you a better offer than just following orders: there's certain Gems in the mine that he ten of, and he can reward you with a promotion to Thane and give you control over this crappy mountain you're assigned to work at. He would prefer it if you would all work together to get the Gems, but logically you will not--there's no incentive to do anything other than collect 10 gems as fast as you can and turn them in all at once for the prize. Thus semi cooperative even if all outside sources (monsters, expedition authorities, and the king) treat the Expedition as a single unit.

The table will become dominated by a big map, made up of hexes and assembled carcassonne-style by placing them so they match the landscape of surrounding tiles. Tiles have cues for what they contain, be it gold or iron or a cave that monsters may emerge from, and cost money (and unit labor) to place. Units require money to assign labor to anything, so basically the entire game runs on cash. You get cash for production, for holding buildings, and you can demand cash from other players if they want you to be helpful--and you are very cost efficient at doing work within your speciality. Workers have a limited movement range but will provide as much work as you pay them for. So money is essentially the "energy" you've built up to make things happen.

In addition to the mine (ie, most of the tiles) there is a cluster of town tiles where business can be conducted. Town is where trading (and accessing town production structures) and screwing with the vote system (ie, the Tribunal) takes place. Some Guilds are more focused on town activity and some guilds are more focused on mine activities, but the economy of the mine (and the guild cashflow) depends on both.

The game takes place over rounds called Workdays. Workdays are divided into four phases phases performed in the following order:

- Event
- Doom
- Work
- Tribunal

The Event phase is when your overseer, Thane Corwarth, issues his daily production quotas. These drive a lot of mine activity because you will have 1-3 rounds to complete these mandates. (originally I had the mandates less common, but it felt better when it was a constant pressure).You may also have newsletters arrive (event cards that spawn monsters or change an effect), the store in town open their doors (you may place workers in job locations) and the Supply Caravan arrives with three crates of random items to dispense.

The Doom phase is when Monsters move and attempt to break the Seal upon the Doom. The Doom is a far-off threat at the beginning of the game, and the Doom Seal is easy to manage (overall) so long as players don't get overly greedy and reckless. They are almost certain to be both, so that's when it becomes a bit of a juggling act. Monsters automate their actions through Boss cards, which determine what actions are available, and monster activity may also be dictated by the instructions given on Event cards, Adventure cards, and the effect created when the Doom Seal cracks.

The Work phase is when Guilds order their workers to produce items, mine for ore, explore the caves or conduct trade at market. All worker activity is essentially spending money and allocating work points toward a task, job or combat encounter that you want to complete.

In addition to the "legal" trades conducted at the marketplace the players can conduct Black Market Trades between each other as "under the table" deals, in a literal fashion. Players can trade anything they want on the black market: you can promise to give someone a gem if they move their units to help defend some workers. You can swap your buddy three coins for the last slice of pizza. It's all up to you. You cannot trade your workers (ie, your Guild dwarf units) but you can promise to provide specific work with them. As these are illicit deals they are non-binding and you cannot punish someone at the Tribunal for breaking their black market agreement.

The Tribunal phase is when daily production is scored (and turned in good are paid for, giving you money for the next day) and official Tribunal business settled, such as the hearing of petitions (ie, putting to a vote the idea of a new Work Permit and similar things) and the meditating of disputes (if someone is ignoring a legally issued work order you can harass them--also if they blatantly broke the theme by ignoring enemies while your workers died you can claim negligence). Players are supposed to be pretending to be cooperative and working for the greater good, so when people act too blatantly selfish you can vote as a group to affix minor penalties.

Also, the Supply Caravan departs after the Tribunal phase to export the stuff you chose to turn in that day. The caravan can, at any point in the day, be bribed to deliver messages out of the mountain without approval of the overseers. This allows you to skip the normal approvals process for getting new workers (normally you need your rivals to vote to get you more workers) and such, and you can bribe them to smuggle in new items as well, so if your random item drops are really atrocious you can end-run around that too. The smuggling system is convenient and really the "normal" way to buy workers and new items, but it operates as a gold sink. Sinking gold, rather than paying it to rivals, reduces the amount of free gold in the system. That makes it a lot harder for players to accomplish a huge amount of work in a short amount of time, so sinking gold is actually not ideal for the game: that gold WILL get sunk eventually. There's an expected balance (keeping gold in the economy means improving the power of your rivals, who may sink it anyway for short-term gain) but in general players will do best when they walk the line between pure self interest and allowing minor escalation on the part of their rivals.

So players go through several rounds where new challenges emerge and they must complete them while also seeking to improve their own station and collecting gems when they can to work towards a final win. Gems become powerful bargaining chips when they appear. Monsters will, from time to time, pose a threat to the whole productivity of the mine and they are also one of the prime sources of Gems for stealing, as they accumulate on the Doom Seal as the Doom strengthens. Monster busting grows more valuable slightly slower than the rate at which it becomes more dangerous, so big and small games have roughly an equal risk-to-reward level (important for guilds who come into contact with monsters more) but the bigger the game the greater the escalation on ALL fronts becomes.

The game ends when the players fail too many mandates, allow the Doom Seal to crack, or someone manages to get the King his 10th gem. He'll award the title to the player who gives him that 10th gem, no matter who did the rest. You don't have to turn the gems in the moment you get one, but I may examine a subtle way or two to encourage players to turn in a single one at some point in order to lower the "I win" threshold a bit.

Players can always come back from a loss because they are certain to be making money each round--every guild has valuable skills. If you're down on the VP chain when someone else is about to win then it probably means you didn't take any risks and didn't negotiate for any gems when other players were willing to sell. If you're just a little behind then you can always indulge in some reckless behavior. I'm not going to put in rubber-banding that lets someone come from dead last, but the way the economy works players will never get so far behind that a negative feedback loop STOPS them from competing at roughly equal footing.

Checked out Rex, didn't know it was related to Twilight Imperium. Each faction has a few subtle benefits and sometimes something major. Almost all are passives but they all have different amounts of bits to juggle (ie, different units and units in reserve) and the leaders are not super well explained but I figure there's leader cards that they didn't reprint in the instruction booklet that would make it clear.

I was going to try to put all data on the single "faction card/mat" that each team gets, but now I wonder if leader cards are a better idea. For one, it does allow more space to be devoted (on that card) to other things. Another aspect is it allows leaders to have more personality because they're customizable.

I may go with generic workers (your doers of deeds) and then specialists with a single simple ability (one of the 1-3 abilities or so would be held by a specialist unit that only your Guild deploys) and then a leader with whatever special powers are on the leader card.

That may keep each guild to within the generic limitations of player memory (1-3 abilities) and give me the ability to have a "leader" unit that players focus on, which would surely assist in reducing the paralysis that can occur from not knowing what unit to move.

Now, in a game like mine a leader is either going to be used to do important work (if it has high stats) or moved to provide a powerful effect (if it can be activated to do a thing) or to sit on a job location (if it has a function that does not require it to be near your units) which I suppose are all fine. I would not want this to end up feeling entirely like a 'hero' but it may reduce the need for nebulous "faction powers" overall if all powers are invested in the units you have.

Workers, being generic, would only change if there's some very broad bonus to all faction units. All guilds share the same kind of workers.

Specialists, being unique to a guild, would probably do most of the obvious Guild-related work now. They did in my head before, but if we throw all the "powers" onto units specifically then the specialists are the ones who go and do those things.

Leaders are a wildcard in this situation, especially if they have a little leader card, because you probably start with one. So that guy or gal will have powers that they can use from the get-go, maybe with an upgrade criteria, maybe not. In this case balancing around those powers is important, and the leader is like a really minor bit of "deck building" because you have your basic stats and now you get one little added quirk. Having just one leader/unique unit per side keeps unnecessary complexity down, I think.

These are just ruminations. I like variety in models, and I think most players do too. Generic workers, specialists, and a unique unit seem like a good spread. Since I need to do something similar with monsters (seems likely anyway) it would also keep things consistent and allow me to use the same game language to explain your units and the monster units. I really love consistency.

It's not really related - it's a reskin of the old Doom board game, which might make some of the mechanics make more sense.

You could use turning gems in as a way to buy leaders, otherwise there is no incentive to do so at all. You'd be helping everyone else and harming yourself.

Leaders in Rex are a straight up numerical bonus to an army pile: 3 troops + a leader of 5 = 8, but you can only use each one once per turn, if they loose they need to be healed before they can be used again and each player also has a few cards allowing them to turn that leader traitor, so there's a risk to using them until you figure out who, if any, of your guys are potential traitors.

Simple leader cards giving specific abilities seems a good way to go. Would you also have mercenaries?

Gems should have some kind of valuable sink. Gems could be a way to unlock those new powers, for example, which makes them a power grab that is rewarding and essentially builds into an existing mechanic. There's really no reason to turn them in early (or to mulch them for gold) aside from something that's as good as 1/10th of a victory.

I'm not having Mercs at the moment. You can hire more dwarves over the course of the game, but once you max out your Guild membership you cannot exceed that maximum number. That's to keep someone from converting gold into warriors and suddenly being a better military force than the Adventurer's Guild would be. I have played with the idea of mercs several times, but I'm not sure how I'd want them to be implemented, and I'm not sure they add much. Fighting is a cool and fun thing to do, but if you're the Banking Guild then you don't really need a massive military force. Because the town is a shared essential asset everyone will defend it from monsters, and if the Bankers need the town defended extra hard they're able to throw some money at the problem and better equip a rival or somesuch. The inability to cover all tasks yourself leads to players having to juggle their ambition of winning vs the reality of what they can reasonably accomplish solo.

Man, stuck on the VP's again. I was hoping that people would want to introduce them into the economy, thus making the VP gains more about controlling the market, but I'm hearing from a lot of people that there's basically no reason they'd ever sell a VP. I'm totally willing to, if I feel that it will benefit me down the line. But it seems like this is a very unusual opinion, and not a behavior I can expect.

Do I try to make it worthwhile enough for people to put their VP's back into the market, or do I need to have several different avenues for VP's to enter player possession?

I feel like it's better if the powers are asymmetric enough that one power generates a lot of the VPs but cannot afford to hang onto them. I like the idea of the Mining Guild handing a lot of Gems over to other people in order to jumpstart their own economy, with the idea that they generate VPs much faster than others so they can afford to (and they have to be able to get themselves upgraded or they'll lose their VP generation edge before long).

I'm pretty sure this would be really cool if it works--maybe it's just a balancing concern.

I'm a bit busy at the moment to do a full review but I'll just note that the game would actually be better off being termed as a competitive game with possible alliances and trading as opposed to semi-coop, as "coop" implies that you are working jointly against a board that might actually defeat all of the players (e.g. Pandemic), while "semi-coop" means that while you're all fighting the board there is still one ultimate winner (e.g. Legendary).

If the threat to losing to the board is pretty remote, then what you describe is much closer to a trading Euro than a coop and I would market it as such. It may be even better to remove the doom mechanic entirely if it's not really a big deal; as having this option around really makes balancing problematic with "salt the earth" kind of players.

madd0ct0r wrote:It's not really related - it's a reskin of the old Doom board game, which might make some of the mechanics make more sense.

You mean Dune, not Doom.

Yes, yes I did

Covenant, would s Simple solution be a cash reward when you hand in a gem?

I've actually got a few solutions now, especially judging from the replies here and elsewhere.

Cash rewards for turning them in (on top of whatever else it does) would be smart. I think the first few gems that get turned in would yield additional supplies for the person.

I'm actually a big snarled up on Lore, which is dumb, but I want things to be sensible and intuitive. Maybe it's just me, but I learn rules much better when they seem to be part of a coherent structure--not just rules for rules sake.

Judging from several responses I think people would prefer a "tally total wealth to win" over "turn in the 10th gem to win" game, and that's fine. Problem is that an arbitrary turn limit is something that annoys me, so playing to x time is not going to work. The gems right now do act as a "turn limit" because you can end the game whenever you like. Theoretically you would want to end the game when you're in the lead, and if you're not in the lead (but have 10 gems) you would want to wait. If you are in the lead (but do not have 10 gems) then you want to get gems.

Seems simple.

Problem is I can't exactly figure out how I want to communicate that to the players. The victory before was "get me 10 gems and I'll be able to appoint you Thane and give you this mountain, but I cannot until you get me gems." Maybe what I need to do is make... waaaait a second.

Hmm. Okay, here we go.

King needs 10 gems to do this thing he wants. Instead of being called in to collect them (which supported a different mechanic) I'll have him there all the time, and assisting him is essentially like paying into an upgrade pool that eventually ends the game and enters a scoring phase. So that's what his demand is. "Want my help? Get my gems." Every Gem you turn over gets you some reward and puts him closer to his goal, and when he finishes up he'll end the expedition in some fashion and a scoring phase begins.

I was probably overcomplicating things. I should have lots of ways to burn gems for upgrades, or mulch them for resources, but also include them into an upgrade queue--and instead of the last gem winning the game, the last gem ends the game and begins the tally. If there's mechanics whereby people can swipe gems or destroy gems or such we can force people to wrangle over control of them at these crucial moments (including the end of the game) when the struggle doesn't yield a winner but one winner-to-be struggles against several people trying to stay in the game. That makes it harder to run away with a win and actually makes the gameplay more devious. Helps reduce the "value" of a Gem too. If you know the other players will beat you senseless for trying to win right now you'll need to wait until they're tied up.

I can obviously set the gem demand higher than 10 (I have no actual limiting factors at the moment) it was just a number that felt smart to work from.

The only question I have is a lore one, really. What's the goal of the gem quota? What happens when it's fulfilled? When it's fulfilled, what does the player get? Is the player who turns in the last one given no bonus other than (let's say) a large cash incentive which goes into the final scoring phase?

I think that may make sense. Last gem ends the game and gives that person some substantial reward--and then everyone can score their points. It is entirely possible that gems aren't victory points at all--Gems are keys to ending the game, and they're worth stuff, but the "VPs" are something else which have no value and do not end the game. Like a Royal IOU. So to sum up:

King hides from the corrupt council and makes a deal with the players: "I'll get you out of this shithole and reward you greatly, but you'll need to get me a few things including some magic-infused gems from below. Once I've got all the stuff I need we'll blow this popsicle stand and I'll make it rain Lands and Titles. Or you can stick around here and dig an early grave cuz there's some real angry fucks down there." Player goal is clear--get out of here by winning the game, but you don't want to blow your chance at becoming as fabulously wealthy as possible so you also try to accrue as much money as you can before you end the game. When things have VP values aside from their cash value it is because holding onto them (they may have no other function except to be VP) allows you to get better titles at the end.

Titles are the prizes. The best title is getting the mountain--though it's possible the King will shut down the mine, you'll still have lands aplenty for farming and such. You get better titles the more lavishly you can tribute the King at the end, after his mission is complete. Presumably what you are paid in (mine scrip) is just about worthless, which is fine in the closed economy of the mine but reinforces how lousy a job this is. So while that mine scrip may be worth something (barely) the Gems and probably some fancy treasures are what really earn title points at the end. Something like Glamdring may trade for 10 Scrip in the mine because that's all you'll get for it, even if it's priceless. It'd be like if you found a painting in the mine, and it was a priceless relic that the King will reward you for, but to the other miners it's pretty much worthless until you get out of here.

If you "sell" it then you're exporting it at the price Thane Corwarth, the bastardly "governor" of the Expedition, is willing to pay you for it. He'd give you something decent (at least decent compared to your wages in the mine) but nowhere near the actual value.

I think this probably works out well. Makes gems less unique and less valuable (they're not the only source of VP) which is good, and it makes gems a crucial aspect of the economy (you end the game with them, they may give you upgrades and other bonuses, etc) and it makes the end-game winning suit the fancy of players a bit better.

I like this revised version a lot it as it opens up a ton of new avenues for player interaction both with the game itself and with their fellow players. Do you sell the item for immediate gain (or so as to not advance the track towards the end of the game); do you keep it and hope that you didn't need that cash infusion as bad as you thought you did; do you trade it to a player that you think isn't a huge threat even if his offer is low; or do you take the best deal and hope you can make it up in the end; or do you get whatever the king is offering for it up front? That's a lot of options for a single item without even getting into abilities and other game mechanics and it can lead to a lot of interesting strategies.

Going to start kicking the preliminary rules around for some feedback on a variety of places. I've got a bunch of loose ends (in terms of design) that need to get snipped according to feedback and there's really no point continuing tiny-scale playtests!

Delve Deeper: Board Game Mega Alpha Instruction Booklet