TTSR - first playtest

Had my first open playtest today for Tonight the Stars Revolt!  It went about as well as could be expected, by which I mean the players liked the theme and the overall structure of it, and gave me lots and lots and lots of feedback on things to improve for next time.  My biggest concern was the combat system, which is currently pretty flat and really was just a placeholder for initial testing anyway.  Players agreed that it wasn't great, gave me some suggestions for other games to look at for ideas, and that was as far as that went so it's pretty much all "TBD" at the moment.  My initial idea is to add randomization on top of the combat stats for the different ships, but I'll check out the other suggested games before I really get to work on anything.

Ooh, maybe cards for special maneuvers in combat.  And the aliens would get something similar, with more cards added or removed from that deck based on what players do.  Actually, maybe that idea should add onto (or completely replace?) the current AI system as a whole.  This will need further consideration...

Yeah, the enemy AI system, that was my other main focus.  In principle it worked well - they liked the setup with the three different decks of cards and with the players' actions determining which deck the aliens would draw from, and they used that as part of the strategizing on their turns, which was exactly one of my design goals for the game.  But it actually worked too well in that regard, and the aliens wound up being very passive in this playthrough, which is the opposite of how it should go (and very different from what I got in my last solo test, but then I was also playing it pretty differently from how the other people were today - which of course is part of why testing with a group is so important).  So whatever I do to revise the AI system, it will need to be a lot more aggressive overall.

Those are the main things I'll be focusing on for the next round(s) of revisions.  Other things that came up today were giving players more control over what tech upgrades they get (maybe even have whole tech trees?) and having more ways for them to interact meaningfully with each other.  I definitely do want to address both of those, but for right now they feel like lower priority compared to combat and enemy AI, so they're going to have to wait for a bit.

Hang on to tomorrow, because tonight...

 It's been a few more rounds of tinkering, solo testing, and tinkering some more, but I think I got Tonight the Stars Revolt! up to where I want it - ready to start testing with other people.  Solo testing with the current iteration felt suitably tense, with a lot of back-and-forth swings between the humans or the aliens having the upper hand, and that was very much how I want it to feel.  There's still a lot to figure out, most notably whether combat is going to be based on static numbers or if there will be any randomization, but that's what further testing is for.  At least now I got it up to where I can start doing that, maybe as soon as next weekend.

I'm back, and with even more lasers...

That hiatus over the last few months was good for me, but I am definitely back now.  Today I did my first barely-even-alpha solo test for a new board game, Tonight the Stars Revolt!  The premise of the game is that a number of human-occupied space stations around a trinary star system were being forced to gather energy from the stars for the benefit of their alien overlords, but now they are fighting back.  It's a co-op game with all of the players working together against the aliens, trying to destroy their mothership before the aliens have collected too much solar energy.  The goal is to have lots of high-speed space combat, multiple problems on the board that need to be addressed at any given time (kind of like X-Com, now that I think of it), and an interesting AI system for the aliens.  There's still a lot for me to figure out, but I think I'm at least on the right track here.  And I like what I have so far for the AI, that it uses three different decks, which are weighted toward different types of actions, and the decision of which deck to use depends on the player action to which it is responding.  Ideally I'd like to get it to a point where players can strategize around which deck they want the aliens to use (or avoid), and have that be a meaningful decision.

There's still a lot of work to do before this one is even ready for testing with other people, but it does already feel like there is a real game here (much more so than what I got with Scales).  And more importantly, it's gotten me excited to get working on games again. 

minor update (but yes I'm still here)

I know things have slowed down lately with the game design stuff while I work on some other projects.  But I did knock out one big task today, which was finally giving the Werewolves of London rulebook a proper update instead of just having all the changes scattered among my playtest notes.  And that means that I'm now ready to submit it to this year's Hippodice competition!  And then to some publishers after that's over.  So let's see what happens with that in the near future...

Scales - stepping back

After a few more weeks of beating my head against the Scales rules, trying to find a way to make this game work, I've decided it's time to set it aside.  I might come back to it eventually - at the very least, I would hate to let all those band name puns go to waste.  But I definitely need a break from it for now.

Which means I do get to put my real focus on another project that's been hovering on the periphery for a while.  I'll explain that one in the future post, hopefully with some more things figured out that I can include there.  For now I'll just say that this one is probably going to be around the same weight as Explorers of Legend, give or take a bit.  I'm a little disappointed that this means I pretty much definitely won't have an almost-ready game to bring to PAX Unplugged this year, but that's alright.  It's going to be that much more exciting if/when I do have it more or less complete.

Roll the World is now live on DriveThruRPG

All done and ready for public consumption: 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/527945/roll-the-world 

Distraction done (for now)

In the last post I mentioned a new thing I was playing with, a system of random tables to generate a setting for a fantasy campaign.  Rough draft is now complete and available here.  Here's an example of what it can create:

The region where this hypothetical campaign is set is the western half of a continent, with two large islands close enough to be part of the same region.  The climate is hot and dry, with little seasonal variation.  Despite that, much of the region is dense with plants that have evolved to live with minimal water.  A long range of low hills separates it from the rest of the continent.  Two major rivers do flow from the hills down to the coast, and there are two lakes as well - most of the plant life is probably concentrated around there, but there could be patches that spread out well past where one might expect.  Up in the hills, at the sources for the rivers, it's surprisingly cold, and the rivers are even icy in places.

[if I was actually going to run a campaign here then this would be the part where I draw a map, but I don't feel like spending the extra time on that just for this blog post]

Magic is rarer in this setting than in the default for whatever game system we might be playing.   Using magic requires a physical implement - right now I'm thinking stones with runes carved in them sounds like a good default, but different styles of magic might have their own preferences.

"Civilization" has only begun in the past few generations [author note - taken together with everything else we've rolled so far, I'm getting heavy Ur/Sumer vibes, so that would be something to lean on later - but let's see what else the dice give us].  At this point there is one cultural group that has developed to be the major power in the region; if I was putting them on the map they would almost definitely be on the coast, with their capital at the mouth of one of the two big rivers.  There are also three minor powers to place on the map.  Given this setup, most of it will probably still be unclaimed wilderness.

If I was planning a real campaign I would probably do some rolls to define all four of the states that I've placed, but for this example I'm only going to roll up the one major power.  The process for the minor powers would be the same, some things just might be interpreted differently to keep in mind the relative power levels.  Anyway, for our one major player, they have the one large capital city, no other cities of note, and two large wilderness zones within their claimed borders.  It was established when rival tribes along the coast were forced to pool their resources to get through a particularly difficult year, and recognized the possibilities if they continued this way instead of splitting up again.  It is ruled by a parliament in which each member chooses their own successor before retiring.  Let's call it the Council of Masters, and say it's 50 members who each serve for however long they want (with 5-10 years being average) and an expectation that they will return to their original line of work afterward.  At this moment, the Council is not perfect but they are mostly focused on benefiting the whole country.  Or at least benefiting their city and also trying to keep the more distant settlements safe.  However, only a couple decades ago the Council tended to be a lot more selfish, keeping more resources for the city (or for themselves) and slowing development further out.

 

Technological development is about the same in this country as in the rest of the region.  Most neighborhoods in the city have a variety of workers who complement each other; originally this was an organic development, but more recently the Council has been incorporating this into city planning as they strive to maximize worker efficiency.   Manpower and raw materials are plentiful, particularly clay and stone for building.  There is no central institution for knowledge or culture; that's probably been a non-issue for most of the country's brief history so far, but they're now getting to a point where people are starting to feel it. 

 

The culture is fairly homogeneous.  They're not hostile to outsiders, there just aren't many people traveling the continent right now (although traders sailing along the coast would certainly be a thing).  They value hard work and religious observance, and for the most part they're not fond of people trying too hard to be clever.  Their religion is animistic.  Most of the magic that anyone here knows how to do (and there aren't many who know how to do it) involves bargaining with spirits.  Contact with certain spirits is strongly discouraged, based on legends passed down from early tribal history; whether or not those spirits are actually as dangerous as everyone is told remains to be seen.

 

There are three factions of note in this country:

• The burgeoning class of professional warriors, looking for ways to keep a comfortable income flowing when there is no war at the moment
• Several pirate gangs disrupting coastal trade and fighting with each other as well - one of them is clearly in the lead and working to put down the rest
• Descendants of one of the old tribes who argue that they are underrepresented on the Council

At present, the Council of Masters does not look too kindly on either the warriors or the pirates, but does not consider either faction to be a serious problem just yet.  They are sympathetic to the one tribal group, and several Council members have been actively working with them on identifying suitable candidates.  However, some members of that tribal group have also worked their way into both the warrior class and the leading pirate gang, looking to use either (or both) as leverage if they feel it's needed.  And the warriors and pirates seem suspiciously okay with each other...

 

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Okay, yeah, I could definitely run a campaign of something or other in this setting.  I should also point out that not everything presented here is in the order that I rolled it; some information got moved around based on where it fit better in the narrative.  But all of it does come from the random tables, with me just adding a few details here and there to turn the prompts into something coherent.

 

So that's that for now.   I'm giving it some time for people to review the draft and maybe suggest more content, and then eventually I'll pretty it up and post it on DriveThru and/or Itch.  I'm in no rush for that though.