Hey hey hey, it’s the start of the work week, time to prop your eyelids up with toothpicks, winch open your mouth for the caffeine spout, and numb the pain with another episode of MECHANIC MONDAY!
Ha ha, light stuff, light stuff, we sure have fun here. My wife and I cleaned recently (not exactly a KonMari but definitely some purging) and I organized or binned a bunch of old PnP stuff and old drafts of some of my previous designs. Now, with our guest room / office finally in striking distance of being done, I am of course considering busting out more office supplies and setting up some sort of filing system for the analog manifestations of my prototypes and WIP designs. A folder for each game, each with its own notebook, the various drafts of rules, feedback from various playtests, etc. It might be helpful for me to keep projects from getting lost in the shuffle, or it may cause me to feel an unearned sense of completeness as designs crystallize and ossify. Not sure… but my game collection and game design definitely need to be reorganized to increase games being played and designed. We’ll see what it ends up being.
Anyway, speaking of prototypes, I’ve been working mainly on two: BURN and FFGMGM. As I mentioned previously, I’m going to focus my MechMon’s on FFGMGM for a few weeks, as those are the ideas I really want to communicate to potential co-designers, and to flesh out the possibilities of. So without further ado, here’s another piece of the FFGMGM puzzle: Heroes!
Aging Hero Cards
Heroes are drafted one at a time to each player’s Pool/Guild. From there, they may be added to a team in the course of a season. All Heroes enter the draft with their portrait side facing North, which means they give benefits based on the Apprentice edge of the card. At the end of each season, all Heroes rotate 90*. Cards that were at the Apprentice Level are now at the Basic level, and cards that were at the Basic Level are now at the Champion level, and cards that were at the Champion level are now at the Dedicate level. Cards that were at the Dedicate level may age out, leaving your Pool to be returned to the drafting deck, or may have certain abilities that allow you to score extra points or gain a GM ability.
So many of my design ideas are inspired at least in part by Daniel Solis’ work. I can’t quite remember when he was tinkering with this one, but the gist of his proof of concept was, cards that had seven power levels, but each card was only as strong as its (fixed) position in your hand of cards. I don’t think Daniel ever did anything with that idea, but this is how the concept has morphed in time in my own head.
So the current idea is square cards with one Age per edge of card, with rotation between each age - stats are fixed, and clearly visible to all at the time of draft. Possible wrinkles: Instead of purely fixed stats, i.e. 4 Sword, perhaps they’re fixed + die rolls, i.e. 3 Sword + 1d4Sword, or totally luck-based, i.e. 4d4 Sword. And if we want to obscure a Hero’s long-term potential, we can combine this with another favourite mechanic of mine and make them regular poker cards with A and B (180* rotation) on one face, and C and D (180* rotation) on the back of the card. So you know you’re drafting a promising Paladin, but does she end up developing into her Reliable iteration, her Hall of Fame iteration, or her Bust iteration? You won’t know until you get to year 3 of having her.
Lots of ways to futz with this too. Instead of rotating at all, could just be adding cards splayed underneath each hero, from Age (splayed above the card) and Training (splayed below the card). Getting into some Alone at the Crossroads stuff there, but could be worth a shot if we want it to get fiddlier.
Variables to track: Fiddly vs ease-of-play; perfect knowledge vs partial info; fixed values vs dice-rolling/card-drawing. Lots of fun knobs to twist as we search for the perfect balance.
Anyway, until next week!
Ha ha, light stuff, light stuff, we sure have fun here. My wife and I cleaned recently (not exactly a KonMari but definitely some purging) and I organized or binned a bunch of old PnP stuff and old drafts of some of my previous designs. Now, with our guest room / office finally in striking distance of being done, I am of course considering busting out more office supplies and setting up some sort of filing system for the analog manifestations of my prototypes and WIP designs. A folder for each game, each with its own notebook, the various drafts of rules, feedback from various playtests, etc. It might be helpful for me to keep projects from getting lost in the shuffle, or it may cause me to feel an unearned sense of completeness as designs crystallize and ossify. Not sure… but my game collection and game design definitely need to be reorganized to increase games being played and designed. We’ll see what it ends up being.
Anyway, speaking of prototypes, I’ve been working mainly on two: BURN and FFGMGM. As I mentioned previously, I’m going to focus my MechMon’s on FFGMGM for a few weeks, as those are the ideas I really want to communicate to potential co-designers, and to flesh out the possibilities of. So without further ado, here’s another piece of the FFGMGM puzzle: Heroes!
Aging Hero Cards
Heroes are drafted one at a time to each player’s Pool/Guild. From there, they may be added to a team in the course of a season. All Heroes enter the draft with their portrait side facing North, which means they give benefits based on the Apprentice edge of the card. At the end of each season, all Heroes rotate 90*. Cards that were at the Apprentice Level are now at the Basic level, and cards that were at the Basic Level are now at the Champion level, and cards that were at the Champion level are now at the Dedicate level. Cards that were at the Dedicate level may age out, leaving your Pool to be returned to the drafting deck, or may have certain abilities that allow you to score extra points or gain a GM ability.
So many of my design ideas are inspired at least in part by Daniel Solis’ work. I can’t quite remember when he was tinkering with this one, but the gist of his proof of concept was, cards that had seven power levels, but each card was only as strong as its (fixed) position in your hand of cards. I don’t think Daniel ever did anything with that idea, but this is how the concept has morphed in time in my own head.
So the current idea is square cards with one Age per edge of card, with rotation between each age - stats are fixed, and clearly visible to all at the time of draft. Possible wrinkles: Instead of purely fixed stats, i.e. 4 Sword, perhaps they’re fixed + die rolls, i.e. 3 Sword + 1d4Sword, or totally luck-based, i.e. 4d4 Sword. And if we want to obscure a Hero’s long-term potential, we can combine this with another favourite mechanic of mine and make them regular poker cards with A and B (180* rotation) on one face, and C and D (180* rotation) on the back of the card. So you know you’re drafting a promising Paladin, but does she end up developing into her Reliable iteration, her Hall of Fame iteration, or her Bust iteration? You won’t know until you get to year 3 of having her.
Lots of ways to futz with this too. Instead of rotating at all, could just be adding cards splayed underneath each hero, from Age (splayed above the card) and Training (splayed below the card). Getting into some Alone at the Crossroads stuff there, but could be worth a shot if we want it to get fiddlier.
Variables to track: Fiddly vs ease-of-play; perfect knowledge vs partial info; fixed values vs dice-rolling/card-drawing. Lots of fun knobs to twist as we search for the perfect balance.
Anyway, until next week!
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