Skip to main content

Thoughts On Project Smatter

What? Two posting days in a row? Is he back, folks? Is he back?
Well, we'll see.
I wanted to coalesce some thoughts I've had for a two-player semi-abstract game.  Its working title is Project Smatter, as it involves cyberpunk and chess elements.  Well, chess-ish.
That's the thing.  The game as I will envision it will push how we envision abstract games, while also utilizing different mechanics from the oldest games of the genre.  I especially want to play with:
  • Pieces that change into other pieces.
  • Different capturing types:
    • Jumping, a la Checkers
    • Taking, a la Chess
    • Hammer-and-anvil / surrounding, a la games of the Tafl family.
  • An unusual board
Right now, it's a 2-player game where each side starts with 8 pieces, all of the basic type - sPawn (Can move 3 spaces, hammer-and-anvil style conversion, turns enemy pieces into friendly sPawn).  Ideally, sPawn can be (optionally) upgraded under certain conditions to become cRooks (Can move 2 spaces, jump to convert enemy pieces into... friendly sPawn? Friendly pieces of the same type?), which can in turn become duChesses (Can move 1 space, can take enemy pieces, removing them from the game) which are the pieces used to win the game (by holding/occupying Victory Spaces? Crossing enemy lines? Returning home? Capturing a certtain number of pieces?)
I'm also looking at having a round board, with rotated rings inside to create a messed-up grid for movement, that will hopefully encourage lateral thinking in the spatial strategy.  But maybe a simple square grid works best? I don't know.
I'm a little paralyzed by the possibilities presented by some of the fundamentals, like I was with board shape for Cultivate.  Here's hoping I can work through them faster than I did for Cultivate.  At the very least, I've got a chewy basic premise, and some great chess-pun/references for the names of pieces.  We'll see.

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 ...
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

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 app...
Post a Comment
Read more