Progress Report 3/27/22

Today's game design work - wrote up the damage and injury section for Neon Knights.  I had been struggling a little with working out an idea for how I wanted to depart from baseline Fate Accelerated, and today I was able to pin it down.  As I mentioned in my prior post summarizing the game, all rolls use a combination of two approaches, and damage might be dealt directly to the approaches you used.  What I wrote up today was the specifics for making that an option that essentially replaces FAE's mild consequences (and, admittedly, gives you a lot more of them).  Stress still works like normal, as do moderate and major consequences.  I'm not sure how this will affect the power level - on one hand, it means that PCs can take a lot more damage than in other Fate-based games, but on the other hand they get a direct penalty to the damaged approach, rather than an aspect that may or may not ever be invoked, so when they do get hurt it might matter more.  Eventually I'll actually test the game and see how this works out, but this is where we are for now.

Progress report 3/24/22

 I haven't written anything new in the last couple weeks,* which isn't great.  But I have put in a decent amount of time recently scrolling through other exploration games on BGG so I can compare The Grand Expedition with whatever else is out there.  Right now I'm up to about 25 games that look similar enough to be worth mentioning.  Reason for this is so I can be clearer about how my game is different from what already exists - partly for marketing (including pitching to publishers, which I hope to do in the near future), partly so that if I emphasize those differences in any future rule revisions it will hopefully improve gameplay (as with my recent revision to beef up options for players interacting with each other).  So that's where that is for the moment.

*okay, not entirely true - yesterday I got hit with an entirely new game idea and started listing ideas for cards that might be in it.  But that one's not ready for me to start talking about "officially."

The Grand Expedition - what it is, and how it's going

 I probably should have started with this instead of having multiple posts talking about details of it without giving the summary, but oh well, better late than never.  So, what is this game I've been focused on lately?

The Grand Expedition is a fantasy exploration board game, in the style of old D&D hexcrawls.  Each player controls a team of adventurers competing for the most fame.  The teams all have different starting abilities and upgrade options, thus giving advantages to different strategies or play styles.  And while each player is doing their own exploring, there are also ways that they can interact with other players who are nearby - granting bonuses or penalties on die rolls, triggering special abilities that each team gets if another player is nearby, and even outright attacking or stealing from each other.

The basic procedure of exploration is that, upon entering an unexplored hex, you roll to determine if it is the same type of terrain as your starting hex or if it's completely random, and then you draw a card to see what you find there.  The reason for that first roll is to give somewhat more realistic results than if it was completely random all the time - you can still get a desert right next to a forest, for instance, but you're at least more likely to get larger regions of adjacent forest tiles and adjacent desert tiles as well.  Some of the things you find can give you bonuses in all adjoining hexes of the same terrain type, so it's definitely helpful to have the rules skew toward giving you more usable areas.  It also creates a different strategic angle, as entering a new hex from different directions will shift the odds of finding different terrain there, and that might be something you can use to your advantage.

Things you can find when you explore a new hex include are Dungeons, Settlements, Threats, Wondrous Sites, and Hazards (it's also possible to find nothing of interest).  The first three are groups of creatures; Dungeons and Settlements are static, and Threats will move around the board until defeated.  For any of these three, players can choose to Fight (successful roll gets you some Fame and whatever treasure they had), Negotiate (successful roll gets you some Fame and a different bonus, but no treasure), or Escape (successful roll just gets you out of there safely, though you can also steal some treasure on your way out if your roll is high enough).  Wondrous Sites are particularly impressive and/or magical parts of the landscape, which give you some Fame for discovering them and maybe also another bonus of some sort.  And Hazards are environmental threats  - maybe take some damage, and probably nothing good.

Rolling poorly, regardless of what you're rolling against, means you take some damage.  There is no player elimination; instead, when you've taken too much damage you are forced to return to town so you can heal up, but then you can get right back out to the wilderness after that.

One other element that adds strategy to the game is Legends.  The idea is that even though this vast area is unexplored, there are old stories, faded maps, and so on that give some hints about what might be found in the wilds.  This is represented by cards that players can take ahead of time and then choose when they find whatever is on it.  Or choose to have someone else find it if you prefer ("uh oh, Jim is in the lead, it sure would be tragic if he found a lich king in that hex he just entered").

Current status of this game - let's call it 90% complete.  Maybe even 91% if you're feeling generous.  The rules are pretty much set (and a copy of the rulebook by itself is available here), there's plenty of stuff to find, and there's a virtual prototype that you can play for free on Tabletop Simulator.  What it still needs is lots of testing so I can refine what's there.

Grand Expedition updates

 I guess update #1 is that, after all my hemming and hawing a couple of posts ago, I've decided to stick with the existing title for now.  Thank you to everyone who commented on the other post, whether with name ideas or other advice, and if you still have thoughts about this and want to say so (either here or there) I'm open to whatever you've got.

As for actual game content, here are the changes I made today:

• added a new ability to each player sheet, giving them some kind of bonus whenever there is another player nearby at the start of the turn (different bonus for each team, but they all have the same trigger) - this is present from the start of the game and does not need to be purchased as an upgrade
• made one of the Threats a little more threatening by giving them a possible speed boost when rolling for Threat movement

That's what I've got for right now.  Though it also occurs to me that I haven't done a basic summary post of this game like I have with my other two.  I suppose that'll be next.

The Sum of its Parts - what is it, and how it's going

 I was supposed be focusing on Neon Knights and just do one RPG at a time, but then I got hit with this idea and couldn't put it down.

The Sum of its Parts is a horror game in which each player controls a different Fragment of a single individual (referred to in the game rules as the Self).  While it's not the first RPG to tackle this concept, one significant difference between this one and the others I'm aware of is that all Fragments are active simultaneously, instead of taking turns controlling the shared character.  Whoever speaks first gets to decide what the Self does at that moment, and if multiple players call out at the same time (or close enough) then they risk freezing with indecision at a critical moment.

Each Fragment has a different goal, and also different abilities and different knowledge.  If I can make it work for them to have different perceptions at times then that would be pretty cool (this would be really easy in play-by-post, but I'm not sure how it would work at the table).  For the most part, Fragments cannot communicate directly with each other - if one needs information that another happens to have, then things get tricky.

I have no idea what the rule system will look like.  I briefly considered adapting the dice pools from Don't Rest Your Head, but I think I'd rather do my own custom system.  It's totally up in the air at this point.

One thing I do know so far is that there are two stats which are shared between the whole group.  Cohesion is the health/damage track, which covers both physical and mental damage.  If it hits 0, that's a game over for the whole group.  Integration measures how well the Fragments are able to work together.  At the high end it would allow Fragments to communicate with each other, despite what I said earlier.  At the low end I'm not sure; maybe it would mean Cohesion damage, or maybe I can think of something more interesting.

The game is definitely competitive - each Fragment has their own goal, which is stated as "When ___, the game ends and you win."  But since they all share the same body, there's a limit to how much they can actually work against each other.  I'm excited to see how that part works out in play.

And then there's the setting.  My focus for the game might be about how the Fragments interact and interfere with each other, but they need something do to in order to showcase that.  My most specific idea, which got this ball rolling in the first place, is that the game starts with the Self waking up in a hospital bed or something similar, and a doctor (or similar) asking "Do you know your name," "Do you know where you are," and maybe a couple other cognitive screening kinds of questions.  So building from that, I feel like a constant should be that the game takes place in some kind of facility that does medical treatment and/or research - "legitimate" medical research lab, mad science lab, military hospital, etc.  There's an implication that the reason the Fragments became separated is something to do with the work being done there.  Broadly speaking, the activity of the game involves finding your way through the facility, maybe figuring out what's going on there, and hopefully getting out in one piece.  Of course the individual Fragments' goals might change that, but I think I need a starting point before I know what everyone is deviating from, and this is it.  Ideally what I'd like to do is start with a broad framework and then let random tables fill in the rest, so there can be more variety between play-throughs even if they all start with this same premise.

One other thing I've come up with so far, just as a side detail that seems like fun, is that mirrors have power.  My current idea is that the first time during the game that the Self looks in a mirror, it triggers the GM to ask each player a random question from a defined set (e.g. "What about your reflection looks wrong?" or "What you see triggers an important memory, what is it?").  Looking in mirrors again later on might have different effects but I don't know yet what that would be.

And that's where I am so far with this one.  I have a sense of what I want the narrative to look like, but I need rules, and I need random tables to build the Fragments and the facility (and maybe anything else too?).

Neon Knights - what is it, and how's it going

 

Neon Knights is a heavy metal, cassette futurism, fantasy RPG that (hopefully) captures the feeling of that song.  The basic premise is that the players are all Knights, equipped with swords, laser blasters, and motorcycles, defending their realm from whatever threatens it.

In terms of game mechanics, I'm using Fate Accelerated Edition at the core, but stealing liberally from some other sources as well.  The biggest change is that FAE's approaches are replaced with a list of knightly virtues (similar, but not identical, to Pendragon).  Any die roll is a combination of two virtues, and consequences sustained on a roll apply directly to one of the virtues you used.

The game also includes shared setting creation by taking turns answering a set list of questions about the Realm itself and the world around it (idea taken directly from Kids on Bikes, though the specific questions on the list are my own).  Answers to these questions are directly useful as is, but since this is Fate they are also used to define several aspects for the setting.  And, as with other Fate games, players can define additional details through the aspects they take for their characters.

Here's what I have so far that I'm feeling comfortable with (apart from the exact prose):

• Adaptation of the core FAE rules
• Setting creation and character creation
• Basic rules for Steeds (ultra-tech motorcycles, which definitely deserve some mechanical definition)

Here's what still needs a lot more work:

• Adapting damage rules, given the other changes I'm making
• Weapons, armor, and any other gear that might matter
• Sample adversaries (I've got a few but I want more)
• General guidelines for what the setting looks like, which the question list then fleshes out
• Magic and/or old tech - one of the side thoughts I've had with this game is that it will involve discovering lost tech, which may or may not be magical, but I haven't really figured out what I wasn't to do with this piece yet

That exploration game - further thoughts on needed revisions

 In my last post I went on about the title of the game (still unsettled at this moment, but I'll stick with something eventually).  Today I want to talk a little bit about other changes that I've been thinking about in the past few days.

All of this was spurred by my discovery of another game that had a successful Kickstarter right around the time that I was putting together my Tabletop Simulator prototype, which is also about fantasy adventurers exploring a random hex map, fighting monsters, finding treasure, buying upgrades, and racing to get a certain number of victory points.  But as I've been watching some of the videos that have come out about that game, I've noticed some differences between what they focus on and what my game focuses on.  So one thing I'm working hard on now is magnifying those differences.

Besides that, I also got feedback from a couple of the Cardboard Edison judges that what they really liked from reading my rulebook was the options for player interaction.  As it currently stands, players who are in the same hex, or adjacent hexes, can choose to give a +1 or -1 modifier to each other's die rolls.  Players can also trade Loot cards, or straight up attack each other.  So that's a good starting point, but in light of the increased competitive pressure, I think I need to amp it up.  I don't have the mechanics nailed down yet but here are the ideas I'm playing with:

• giving each team a starting ability which will give them some kind of bonus when other players are nearby
• adding magic items which will let players help or interfere with each other from a longer range (probably as a single-use item)

One other thing I want to build up is options for planning and strategy.  I already have something called Legends, which are Exploration cards that you get ahead of time (representing rumors and legends you've heard about what might be out there) and which you can play at any time, on your turn or someone else's, instead of drawing a card from the deck like normal.  Depending on what cards you're holding, you can plan around finding something that will be a relatively easy challenge, or that will give you a specific bonus you want if you Negotiate, or if it's something particularly bad you can plan to screw over another player by having them find it.  So one change I definitely want to make is increasing the opportunities to find Legends during the game.  I'm also toying with the idea of adding magic items and/or player abilities that will let you make changes to things that are already on the board, like treating a card as if it was a different type (e.g. "treat all Humanoid cards as if they had the Animal keyword").  As I'm typing that I'm not super confident about how it will affect strategy in the game, but it still seems like it might be fun to have.  Last, there are a few cards that can let you move things that are already on the board, including terrain tiles; I kind of feel like I want to have more of those but I also feel like I need to be able to justify it in the flavor text.

Maybe I should just call the game "℥"

 My current board game project has existed for the past couple years under the title The Grand Expedition.  It was the best I could think of when I started, and while I didn't love it at first it kind of grew on me over time.  Or at least I got used to it being the title, and in my mind it fit.

As long as I was getting zero attention that was fine.  But then I submitted the game to a design competition, and one of the comments that I got was that this title conjured up very different images in that judge's mind than what the game actually turned out to be.  And when I started asking around, other people gave me the same response.  I got things like "exploring forests and mountains," "exploring Africa or Australia," and "something something colonization."  What I didn't get was "competing to be the most famous explorer in a D&D-style fantasy world and encountering the various creatures, sentient and otherwise, that live there," which would have been the correct answer.

So I guess it's time to change it.  I need a title that gives the correct impression of what this game is about, or at least closer to it than what I have now, and that isn't already taken.  And preferably one that is appealing to my hypothetical audience.  Here are the best ones that I've come up with, and which are still available according to BoardGameGeek:

• Beyond the Borderlands
• The Fantastic Wilds
• Maps & Monsters
• To the Farthest Reaches

I couldn't set this up as a poll like I was hoping, so I guess it'll just be like this.  Comment to tell me which title(s) you like best, or if you have an even better idea, or if you think everyone else I spoke to is wrong and I should stick with The Grand Expedition.