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Sunday, November 20, 2011

quick notes - 20-Nov-2011

For my dice game:
  • It might make sense to force the player to select a certain number of dice to roll on a turn instead of being able to roll all of their dice. Perhaps this would be based on the highest value die that they are rolling -- perhaps the value of their highest die plus one. For example, if they only have 1-star dice, they could only roll 2 dice on their turn. If they gain a 3-star dice, now they can roll up to 4 dice on that turn. This would prevent a player from gaining a bunch of 1-star die quickly and running away with the game. It would also affect the utility of buildings and techs.
  • I'm still not convinced I need both buildings and techs, but I'm also not sure which I would keep.
  • For thematic reasons, I'm considering making the role selection a vote each round where the number (or value) of dice committed each round would serve as votes for performing a particular role. This could fail miserably if one player could dominate the voting, so I'd have to include some restrictions to prevent this. Maybe it's too complicated.
For the train-deck-building game:
  • Card games really want cards with power. Right now all I have are links, loans, and money. Boring.
  • I'm considering giving the links a second use -- perhaps they can be discarded for some temporary effect.
  • I'm not convince this won't suffer from the dreaded "multiplayer solitaire" feel. The problem is that if the right links aren't available to buy, there's no competition for goods. Of course, I've only simulated 2-player games, so maybe this wouldn't be as evident with 3 or more players.
  • A possible solution to this problem would be to make the link cards generic (1-track, 2-track, 3-track, etc.). A player would purchase the generic link, and then could meld the card to claim a link on the map. This would require pieces to mark claimed links, but I was planning on doing this anyway. I don't want to move this into board game territory -- the point was to make a card game. I suppose as long as it plays quicker than the board game, it would be an accomplishment of sorts.
For Franchise:
  • Blood Bowl: Team Manager does a lot of things right, but it's still just as much about playing the game as it is building your team. In fact, it's probably more about playing the game. I want to do the opposite.
  • I think getting rid of the "games" would be okay in order to speed the game up. Some sort of team "strength" would determine how well your team does in a season (a la Basket Boss). However, I still want there to be some variance in the team's strength. The final strength should be unpredictable, but the player should be able to understand the likelihood of reaching a given strength.
  • I want players to have attributes that synergize -- like in basketball, a 4 or 5 that is a "Passer" would increase the value of a 2 or 3 that's a "3-point Shooter".
  • Basketball seems like a good target sport because you only have 5 players on your team. (American) Football would be more fun, and is a much more popular sport in the U.S. Soccer would be most popular world-wide, but I don't really know that much about it.
I should probably focus on one of those more. I think the dice game is winning out.

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