Category: Game Design

Back to thinking about annual life events for villagers. The d10 – stress die roll I used previously did a good job of cycling the villagers through injury and death, but it was abstract and slow. In my last playtest, however, I forgot to include anything like it, and the villagers were too prosperous and effective for the game to be interesting. So, I think a set of cards is the way to go. They should almost always increase the villager’s stress–“stress” was originally “age”, until I realized I could combine the two–but they’re also an opportunity for more interesting and engaging things to happen. It’s a little tricky coming up with ideas that don’t overlap too much with stuff that’s already modeled by other game mechanisms, especially related to work.

My epiphany this morning was to design each life event card so that it includes a first-person quote from the villager. Instead of the Robbery card just saying “This villager gains stress and loses coins”, now it starts with “They took so much stuff. I don’t feel safe in my own home anymore.” Designing the effects of the card from there already seems to be inspiring me to come up with more creative ways to model the event. And I think the players will find it more engaging.

This morning I picked up a Villanostra playtest that I started yesterday. Things are going too smoothly for the village. I accidentally removed the end-of-year mechanism that causes the villagers stress (and previously, injury as well) at the same time that I unthinkingly added the new support mechanism to counteract stress. They are far too happy. I was trying to simplify the game so I could move on to testing the new buildings, but by changing the testing context I rendered the test invalid. Oops.

This morning I started a new solo playtest, using feedback from the last multiplayer playtest. First year went very smoothly, all three projects were completed. Second year looks to be well-funded already, will probably complete all three buildings again. Probably too easy! But the main thing I want to test in this solo is the effects of the buildings, so getting them into play earlier is probably a good thing. At least, for now.

I’m struggling with how to process the changes to each villager’s life at the end of the year. I’ve tentatively added a support mechanism, and checks against the village’s moral values. I still think life event cards are a very interesting idea, but they seem like they would add such variability that I should get the basic mechanisms in place first. (Similar to how there’s no event deck yet for the entire village, even though that’s also something I think is important.)

I think a lot of my uncertainty comes to not having tested the buildings. They’re the core mechanism of the game, and I need to make sure that they are on the right track before I try changing a lot more things. Problem is that it takes almost two years of play before the buildings can start having any effect. I guess I should start some playtests at year 3, with random buildings in play, to see what happens.

I want Villanostra to show (among other things) relationships between the moral values of a community and the well-being of the people that live there. Right now it feels like I’m modeling some aspects of the villagers’ well-being, but not others.

There are lots of ways that researchers measure well-being, but the ones used at Sharecare.com seemed to be well-suited for my model. They look at the following aspects:

• Purpose: liking what you do each day and being motivated to achieve your goals.
  • Currently modeled by the match between a villager’s moral values and the work that they do.
• Physical: having good health and enough energy to get things done daily.
  • Currently modeled by the villager’s accumulated stress.
• Financial: managing your economic life to reduce stress and increase security.
  • Currently modeled by the coins the villager owns.
• Social: having supportive relationships and love in your life.
  • Not currently modeled!
• Community: liking where you live, feeling safe and having pride in your community.
  • Not currently modeled!

It’s somewhat appalling to realize that most of our games–at least, the games that aren’t purely about physically destroying enemies–measure success / victory by no metric other than the financial. That’s certainly endemic in western society, but all games are educational: game designers should be teaching people that other things in life have value too.

A first idea to model the Community aspects of well-being is to compare each villager’s moral values with the same community moral value measures the players use to earn victory points. A high correlation will make the villager feel like they belong, and reduce their stress. A low correlation will increase their stress, and possibly add to the community’s unrest.

A first idea to model the Social aspects of well-being is to give each villager a support metric. Different life events each year affect the support. Higher support helps a villager recover each year from stress. I’m not thrilled about adding a new metric to track for 3-15 villagers, though. And it seems like support could be related how the villager’s values match those of their neighbors (especially if they value Loyalty!). Also considering how life events like Marriage and Having a Child would affect support. Lots to think upon.

In considering life events for villagers, I’m already modeling their career, health, economics, and education. What’s really important in real life that I’m not currently modeling is relationships. I considered using a relationship map like some RPGs use, but it think that’s pretty unwieldy for the concept’s relative importance in this game.

I already have a chart for each villager, showing their coins and their stress. I could add another column for their relationships: spouses, dependents, other family, friends? I’ve even considered that if villagers marry that I move both of them to the same line on the chart and pool their values. Having more dependents means they’d have to pay for more food. Relationships also tie closely to the moral value of Loyalty, and could be at odds with Liberty, so that could introduce some new mechanisms.

I’ve also considered that the game should have an objective measure of the village’s well-being at the end of the game, regardless of the councilors’ moral value scores. Relationships could be an important part of that.

Definitely something to think upon more, and experiment with.

I changed the word “facility” to “building” throughout the game this morning, since it’s a more familiar word, even if it isn’t as technically accurate.

I asked Karen to help me come up with a list of life events for the villagers. I think a large part of the success of this game will come from how players feel about these villagers. I’m wondering, for these life events, if they should be very detailed (“_____ was foraging in the woods when they stumbled across an old cave, and found a stash of jewels inside!”) or if they should be general (“Treasure”) with the players requested to tell a little story about each event. The rest of the game doesn’t really have a storytelling feel to it, so I probably shouldn’t put that burden on the players.

Saturday’s playtest of Villanostra went pretty well. We didn’t get as far as testing any of the new facility abilities, but the playtesters were engaged and gave me interesting ideas.

• Score all undamaged facilities each year, whether they employ a villager or not. Bonus points for matching values on employed villagers.
• Players called them “buildings” instead of “facilities”. While they are not all technically “buildings”, it’s a more familiar term and I should use it instead.
• Dot voting for project selection worked great. Only downside is that councilors couldn’t earn a coin by not proposing a project, so the economy is tighter. I’ll leave it as-is for a few more playtests to see if it’s too tight.
• Councilors who aren’t in play are still thematically present: they could add their influence by some easily-processed rules to help get stuff built.

Considering my own situation, it also seemed to me that unemployed villagers should gain stress. 🙁

Stress and corruption mechanisms already seem to work pretty well. End of year villager processing is a little confusing and slow, so I think streamlining that should be my focus to prep for next playtest.

I now have an updated list of village facilities for Villanostra, ready to make a new batch of cards. Undoubtedly, some of them are awful. But testing something awful is how you figure out how to make something better. And I need something ready for our playtest meetup this Saturday: deadlines are great for creating pressure to make progress. Hopefully I’ll have time for at least a brief solo playtest before then, to make them a little less awful before subjecting others to them.