Categories
Haunt Control Inc.

Site Cards

I’m trying to get enough cards and tiles together for a first playtest of Haunt Control Inc. this upcoming Saturday. At least, a first playtest for this prototype. This morning I worked on item and creature cards for the Myterious Mansion site module. This would be easier if I had any clue how I want the light and fire mechanisms to work. I know those mechanisms feel like they should be important to the game, but they aren’t so core that I need to figure them out before this early crappy-first-draft playtest. Unfortunately, that’s a strong clue they aren’t needed in the game at all, and thus should be removed.

Note that I have done some solo playtesting of this prototype. I won’t subject playtesters to something I haven’t at least tried to solo playtest. They would only find things that should have been obvious to me. That’s a disrespectful waste of their time.

I like having a couple of creatures in the site module. There are some interesting interactions there, potentially, that force the players into hard choices. If the Frightened Vagabond is incapacitated, the players lose, so they may need to escort her to the exit, or at least talk her into moving that direction. The Stray Dog can help the agents sense trouble, and maybe even help them fight. Not quite done with that one yet.

If I can get a dozen site cards together–in addition to the items, which go in a separate deck–that will be plenty. I also want about that many non-item ghost cards. And about that many area tiles. I really should focus on the area tiles, because I don’t really have anything there yet.

Categories
Game Design Haunt Control Inc.

In The Cards

Continuing to work on agent decks. Started the Investigator deck today. Again, still copying text from earlier hand-written prototype cards, but with a different understanding of how some of the mechanisms will work.

One thing that’s paying off nicely is writing a thematic description of each card first, then thinking about how that theme would manifest with the current mechanisms.

I keep getting hung up on wanting to understand how fire and light should work. But I now think that I should just fudge them until I play through a solo playtest. So I need to get a ghost deck together first. And I’m running out of time: there’s a playtest meetup this Saturday, and I’d love to get this on the table then.

Categories
Game Design Haunt Control Inc.

Similar but Different

Continuing to work on agent cards for HCI. Realized this morning that Defense could be just another kind of effort, but when a creature in its location would take damage, the players can remove defense to reduce the damage. Making it a type of effort should make the game easier to learn. It also opens the opportunity to have defense be applied to resolving challenges, which I quite like.

I’m getting a little too caught up in the exact wording of these cards. But now is not the time to go into that level of detail. And as I’m writing the cards, I keep thinking of ways to have this game’s mechanisms act differently from other games. (Example: What if when an agent takes damage, they lose exactly 1 resolve, regardless of how much damage they took?) And only the important mechanisms should be substantially different from familiar ones. That’s both to keep the game playable, and to prevent me from going down rabbit holes that delay getting a playable prototype on the table.

Categories
Game Design Haunt Control Inc. Indy TableTop Game Creators

In the Cards

Yesterday, and much of this morning, were spent putting forth the announcement for this month’s playtest with Indy TableTop Game Creators.

I have some agent cards (pencil text on the back of business cards) leftover from a previous prototype. I also have a text file with ideas for such cards. This morning I started combining those ideas with a spreadsheet that had yet another version of the same cards. The result will be a dataset that I can import into Component.Studio, to create cards that are testable in Tabletop Simulator.

It’s a little bit of a wimpout to work on these cards–again–instead of making cards for the ghost deck. I don’t have any version of those ghost cards at all. But thinking about how the players will play their cards in this incarnation of the prototype will hopefully give me ideas on how those ghost cards should work. And it was an area where I could make forward progress, which I hope will build the momentum I need to tackle the ghost deck. So to speak.

Categories
Game Design Haunt Control Inc.

Where to Find a Challenge

Nothing visible to show for work this morning. But I did ponder the turn sequence a bit more, as well as more analysis of what physical components are required to play out the climax of the game. This doesn’t actually include the tracker I designed yesterday, because in the simplest prototype I can imagine, I should just assume that all the tracks are at their ends.

The main thing I accomplished this morning is figuring out where to describe the challenges that allow the players to win the game:

  • The challenge to seal the source is on whatever sealing item the agents may attempt to use.
  • The challenge to incinerate the source is on the source item.
  • The challenge to appease the ghost is on the apparition’s page in the ghost booklet.

The main thing that I need but don’t yet have is a deck of cards for the ghost to play on its turn. This will look suspiciously like a villain deck from Sentinels of the Multiverse. So that’s really what I need to focus on next.

Categories
Game Design Haunt Control Inc.

Getting Back on Track

I have been working intermittently on a game about ghost hunters for a few years now. At the last Protospiel Online I was starting to get tired of working on Villanostra so I thought I’d get back to Haunt Control Inc.

I haven’t really made very good progress. I’m just trying to make the smallest possible prototype for testing the climax of the game. But I sit and stare and the screen and nothing much comes out. Fortunately, I’ve been here before, and I know some things that help.

  1. Start writing a log of my progress each day. (Hence this post.)
  2. Start assembling physical components.

I kind of cheated on #2 today. I need a status tracker for the new prototype, and I started sketching it on an index card. But frankly that’s pretty tedious, trying to get three tracks on the card that are the right size to move a token along. In addition, I’ve been learning to use Figma at work, so I used it to create the tracker above. I don’t know that it was much less tedious, but it did help me practice using that tool, and it will be much easier to change the tracker when I want to do so.

Another odd thing about this project is that I’m starting to develop an odd sense of pronoia about it. There have been a few small coincidences: things that keep me thinking about the ghost hunting theme, for example.

  • Stumbling across Lonesome Ghosts, a Disney short I used to watch. (And finally being able to watch the whole thing!)
  • The theme to Ghostbusters coming up in my Pandora feed.

It’s nice to think that something in the universe outside my own head wants me to work on this. I see no reason not to indulge it!

Categories
Game Design Villanostra

The Puzzle

By the time I’d reached year 5 of my solo 3-councilor game, I’d managed to build every building in the build row, and the threats were having virtually no impact. I know I’m playing more cooperatively than three individual players probably would, but that’s far too easy. Time to reassess the cost to build a building.

I dealt random some sets of 6 villagers and 3 buildings. For each set I took the influence from 3 councilors and tried to see how much I could accomplish with perfect cooperation. In other words: the councilors place their influence to maximize the villagers’ effort, even if it doesn’t help their own score. Getting 6 effort on the first building was pretty hard, even at the expense of effort to the other two buildings.

Getting 5 effort was certainly achievable, even to two buildings, but probably not to all three. Three is the minimum number of councilors, so a higher-count game would have more influence and potentially make it easier, but I suspect cooperation is actually harder with more players.

So I increased all the build costs to 5. I also made the Liberty and Care threats affect two villagers each, to give them more teeth should they come into play.

Categories
Game Design Villanostra

Too Easy for Coop?

I started playing a 3-councilor solo game this morning. It’s going far too smoothly. Every proposed building has been built. I wonder if people will find that the game is too easy if they play it in a fully cooperative manner.

For example, the Corruption threat. When it triggers, the councilor with the fewest buildings must give some influence to the councilor with the most. This is, of course, bad for the player who loses that influence. Unless the two players involved agree on what goals they want for the year, and work together to meet those goals: in that case, it doesn’t really matter who played the influence, it still helps both players. In that case, the deprived player has lost little or nothing, and the threat is toothless.

Mechanically, this seems like a problem. Thematically, this is exactly the sort of thing I want the game to do. I very much want to see how this plays out in player testing.

Categories
Game Design Villanostra

Too Many Changes

On Saturday I playtested Villanostra again, and it didn’t go as well. For whatever reason I did a very poor job of explaining the rules. I need to write and practice a script to do that better.

Most significantly, based on feedback from Protospiel Online, I put rules in place for players to vote by placing one token at a time. It destroyed the character of the game. There was no debate or discussion, only strategic choices for how to earn the most votes. The newly-added threat mechanisms were ignored. (I’m sure this was partly because I explained the game so poorly.) The collaboration that is supposed to be key to the play experience simply didn’t happen.

I also changed how the players increase their influence. At the end of the year, you could spend two unused influence to unlock one new influence. The analysis phase was dominated by discussing other ideas for how this should work. Only later did I remember that increasing your influence was supposed to be compensation for a turn in which your influence didn’t seem to matter. By abstaining from placing your influence, you acquired more influence that should make a future turn more effective. Instead I was now incentivizing players to not play so they could maximize future power.

What am I doing about this?

  1. Go back to the previous rule of gaining influence only by abstaining from a vote. Mechanically it is similar to turning in unused influence at the end of the year, but psychologically it feels different.
  2. Add a rotating chairman role that walks the other players through the steps, and explicitly starts each vote with discussion. I’m not sure it will work, but it’s something to try.
  3. Write a script for introducing the rules.

We’ll see how it goes next Saturday with my local playtest group.

Categories
100-Word Stories Writing

#75: They’re Coming

John’s family toils up the road. “The way wasn’t so steep for my father,” he grumbles, again. His wife remains silent.

“Make way!” they hear behind them. They step aside. A hundred horses, mules, and camels pass, laden with treasure. Finally, a rich man pauses his golden elephant. “May I show you something?” he asks.

In awe, John says “Certainly!”

The rich man hands him a spyglass. “Look behind us.”

John complies. He sees a multitude: disheveled, battered, and angry. They climb the road, but keep sliding back.

“Beware, my friend,” the rich man urges. “They come to rob you.”