Skip to main content

Mechanic Monday: We're All In The Same Boast With Out of Mana

Hallo hallo hallo.  I’d have liked to get this Mechanic Monday written sooner but last week’s focus was a Writer application, and along with the press of grants reports and proposals due in the month of March, and those deadlines needed the dedicated hours.  And now I’m watching GBBO (a Bread Week no less) while I work, which is hardly a RECIPE for success.  But I still think I can get this post out on time, especially as I did spend a good chunk of my drifting off last night pondering Magic! at the Gathering.  That’s right, it’s another Out of Mana!

I’d like to take a stab at flying, trample, regenerate, some classics there, the tribal concept, cipher, scrying, kicker, but the one I want to write about this week is the other keyword from the Kaldheim set: Boast.

Cascading Conditional Triggered Abilities

In GREEM, the ordinary turn order is alternating actions by each player, but that order is disrupted whenever the conditions are met for a piece’s ability.  When a piece’s ability conditions are met, that player gets to take the piece’s special action, which may in turn trigger another piece’s ability conditions.

Lots of potential here - not surprising, considering achievements are a videogame mechanic that more and more analog games are adapting or drawing inspiration from, and that’s basically what we’ve got here.  What I like about Boast is that it incentivizes attacking, a higher-risk higher-reward choice for a lot of creatures.  To mitigate that risk and maximize the payoff, you have a balance of building an easy combo, or taking wild one-off swings for a big quick score.  I’d like to see a good mix of situationally-easy-to-achieve-but-weak-effect and situationally-complex-to-set-up abilities, which would also allow players to build combos backwards.  Piece A’s ability requires 2x,2y, and z, and z requires an equal number of x and y, y requires an x, and x triggers itself.

Is this a game of removal, taking opposing pieces off the board? Control, to outmaneuver the other player and choke their combos and options? An engine builder toward a highest achievement to fulfil the conditions of? Heck, a la Infinity Shards (kind of a disappointment tbh), Onitama, or any number of civ games, it could have multiple victory conditions, some moons more shootable than others.

I also think pieces would have ranks of some type, to act as tie-breakers, to further limit condition triggers or focus the effects of their abilities.  Fun shit! I should mock this out further.  Anyway, I’ve still got my Accountability Club email to send, so I’ll leave it there for now.  Til next time!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TTRPG Tuesday: Three Means Of Resolving

Hi it’s another TTRPG Tuesday! First of the year.  Let’s get right into it. Saw a challenge on Twitter to make some resolution mechanics.  I can do those! Here we go: Hand to Hand The player performing the action and the person running the game or otherwise opposing the action both put their dominant fists toward one another, bounce them three times to get a rhythm, and reveal a number with their fingers, 0-5.  Sum the two numbers, and if the number is greater than 5, subtract six, so that the final number is always between 0 and 5.  On a 0, the action fails catastrophically, on a 1-2 it fails, 3-4 it succeeds, on a 5 it succeeds spectacularly.  The player taking the action starts the game with all five fingers up on their non-dominant hand; after an attempt, they may lower fingers on that hand to add to the sum of the attempt. Ex. Alice attempts to seduce Cat’s character over to the coup conspirators.  They put their dominant hands together (right for Alice, left for Cat) and thro
Post a Comment
Read more

TTRPG Tuesday: Beliefs as Roles

  Hello from high above the Rockies, as I make my way back to Chicago from Big Bad Con 2023.     This was my first con in five years, and only my second ever.     I had a better time at it than I did at GenCon, which I understand derives largely from this being an industry con vs a consumer show.     I made a modest number of purchases but it was easy to stick to the constraints of my limited luggage space, which was fine; shopping and new releases were not the attraction here.     Gaming, panels, and (as I soon learned) networking were. This con was certainly less overwhelming and I think my expectations were clearer and my FOMO much lighter, but I’ll readily admit that I had a lot to learn.    I misunderstood or made mistakes regarding almost every event I signed up for, including happy accidents like sitting in on the wrong panel only to learn a ton, or expecting a mending workshop to be about fixing one’s writing when the application was rather more literal, which was a fascinat
Post a Comment
Read more

TTRPG Tuesday: Minimum Viable Product for WWDW?

Hello and welcome back to TTRPG Tuesday! I’ve put together a barebones introductory document for We Won, Didn’t We? and, well, I think it speaks for itself.  Check it out HERE ! This introduces the skeleton of the game, as well as walking through the steps; I’d say next up is a rudimentary character sheet, and maybe I can bring this to a Playtest Zero session and see what folks think of character creation within one of the starting Bulbs.  I’ve opened the doc up for comments, so if you have thoughts dear reader, fire away.  Brain fried, go read the doc, til next time!
Post a Comment
Read more