Office Coffee - it's here! (sort of)

 So that dumb viciously fun game I thought of a couple days ago is now complete and ready for testing.  The complete rules take up less than a page, and even factoring in all the time I spent digging through clipart for my dice icons it only took me about 48 hours to complete this (compared to the, I don't remember, maybe 18-24 months that it took me to complete The Grand Expedition).  I ordered blank dice but they won't be here for a week or two, so no prototype just yet, but in the meantime there's a print-and-play version right here.  You'll need a big pile of d6s (30-48, depending on number of players), but the rest of it is there in that nice little pdf.  Give it a look and let me know what you think.

How much do you hate yourself?

 On one hand, maybe I need to get this game design ADHD under control.  On the other hand, I went from spontaneous terrible idea to almost complete first draft over the course of this afternoon and evening.

The game is Office Coffee (and the title of this post is the tagline).  It's a light-medium filler game about office workers racing to get the last cup of caffeinated swill that will help them survive that afternoon's meeting.  It's divided into two phases.  In phase 1, players go to different areas of the office to collect dice that they'll need for phase 2.  You get different dice from the copy room, the HR office, etc.  In phase 2, everyone rolls their dice to collect points or activate other abilities.  Whoever has the fewest points gets eliminated, then everyone else rolls again, and so on until only one player is left.

And that's pretty much it.  I still need to decide what goes on the dice for each room, but as far as basic rules go I thinkI have everything I need.  We'll see where this one goes...

Neon Knights update - equipment

 Spent some time today fleshing out rules or equipment, as well as some basic descriptions for default gear ("default" here meaning what it looks like if your group doesn't decide to change it during session 0).  I'm trying to find a balance between keeping it simple but still having equipment matter for more than just flavor text and narrative permissions.  What I've settled on is that weapons add damage on a successful attack, armor subtracts damage, and other gear can give bonuses for relevant actions.  You can purchase enhancements which increase the item bonus or give it other properties, to a limit (there will also be rules for what might be considered "magic items" in other games, though I'm going with a more magitech flavor here, but that's going to be another time).  Pretty straightforward.  Two sticking points though:

1) Shields - I'm not sure where they fit into this rule framework.  If they subtract damage like armor then they're basically just flavor text for your armor, which could work but also feels a little less satisfying.  Extra damage negation that stacks with your other armor also doesn't quite feel right.  Bonus to your defense roll means that it's effectively extra damage negation and increases the odds of negating the attack altogether, or even reversing it if you succeed with style on the defense, so that makes it even more powerful than regular armor and that definitely doesn't feel right (even if it otherwise makes sense mechanically, in isolation).  So I still need to figure out what I'm doing there.

2) Blasters - Neon Knights might be a mostly medieval-ish setting, but it also has laser guns.  And the lasers are slow, so that's why you can see the red beam shooting from your gun and hitting your enemy.  But if there are laser guns, then why is anyone wasting time with swords?  Well, two reasons.  One, which is still in, is that blasters are relatively rare weapons and are reserved for elite warriors (which definitely includes Knights and maybe others too).  The other reason I originally came up with was that the energy beam starts off weak and then gathers power as it flies, so it's not much use against a target that's in or near melee range.  I still like this idea just for the entertainment value, but the mechanical implications of it clash with the simplicity I was going for.  I guess it could be something like "+0 damage against targets in the same zone, additional +1 for each zone it crosses to reach the target," but I don't know if that becomes too much of a pain in the ass to keep track of compared to all other weapons being a straight "+X damage."  Maybe I'll just have to test it out and see how it feels at the table.

TGE update 5/6/22

 I haven't been doing much design work per se in the last couple of weeks, for this game or any of my others.  What I have been doing lately is researching other games that might overlap with mine in any way that matters.  A little while back I put together a list of about 30 games that seemed like they might be similar, based on skimming their descriptions on BGG, and now I'm looking them up in more detail when I can find a little time to focus on that (which hasn't been much).  Of the ones I've examined so far, similarities have mostly been pretty superficial, e.g. there's also a hex map involved but the actual focus of the game is completely different.  I still have a dozen or so more to look into.  If you know of anything specific that might be close, drop me a line and let me know.

Next step after that - putting together the sell sheet.