Skip to main content

Mechanic Monday: Fantasy GM Squared Waiver Claims Revisited

Hello, and welcome back to Mechanic Monday.  I’m your host, Fin Coe, and I think I went the whole week without getting suspended on Twitter! To celebrate that, and my recent v1.1 tweak of Fantasy GM Squared, let’s do that thing where a blog post comes out on a Monday and dives into a specific mechanic.  Okay, go!

Draft Order as Waiver Wire
In Fantasy GM Squared, the Draft Order is determined randomly at the start of the game, by drawing the Guild’s Draft Order Markers from a bag and placing them on the Draft Order card.  Starting with the lowest numbered Guild in the Draft Order, players turn in their Draft Coins in exchange for a new Hero.  The Draft Order carries over into the Season; after each Category is revealed, players may make a Waiver Claim, again starting with the lowest numbered Guild in the Draft Order.  However, higher-numbered Waiver Claims, placed on top of previously placed Claims, supersede those Claims, and only the top-most Waiver Claim is awarded the Hero.  Once a player successfully claims a Hero using their Waiver Claim, they move their Guild Marker to the lowest number in the Draft Order, bumping all other Guilds up.  The Draft Order may therefore change as Waiver Claims are made throughout the season.  At the season’s end, the Draft Order is reset based on the number of VP awarded in the season, granting the Guild that scored the fewest points the lowest numbered position in the Draft Order.

So this is a pretty dumb but crucial simplification.  I had two tracks that were essentially inverse of one another; Draft High? Waiver Priority Low.  But one was static and one was dynamic.  And that made the components so confusing that the entire mechanic almost got cut for bloat and finnick.  But instead, the static element just became the starting point for the dynamic element, with a manual intervention from the system at the end to end the cycle / start it back up again.  Two components with a weird relationship now folded into one elegantly intraconnected one.  I’m happy about it.  I also massively simplified Front Office Abilities, which was another mechanic I was soooo proud of all those Mondays ago.  I think that the clean elegance of v1.1 is its strength; not massive mechanic changes (though I do have some of those in mind to build and test) so much as many-tendriled Idea Beasts meeting the cold harsh light of reality and settling into more stable and sensible forms.  1.1 is just the cleaned up version of 1.0, but even that feels nice.  Got to actually update the physical prototype, maybe make a second copy of it for myself now that Those Ironrise Boys have the first one.  And I must make some time tomorrow to get in a solo playtest of Potionarium.  End of post.

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

Mechanic Monday: Winding Down an Engine Builder

  Welcome back to Mechanic Monday! Been a minute hasn't it? Remember when I did one of these a week for a year? 2020 was such a productive time! Totally worth the complete decay of my sense of self! Today I’m going to go about things a little backwards.  Normally I start with the mechanical kernel, mock up how it would look in a hypothetical game, and then do a little theorycrafting around it.  This time, I uh already have a v1.0 prototype.  So let's start there. Gradually Shorter Engines In Paper Moth Dynasty, you play a young Monarch, with nine Role cards flipped to either their Sun or Moon side.  In the first round you will place 7 of the 9 available cards in your Court tableau, then Exile a card and play the next round with one fewer card to draw and one fewer to play, then do the same again before the third and final round.  You will therefore place 7 cards in the first round, 6 in the second, and 5 in the third round. So engine builders (and th...
Post a Comment
Read more

TTRPG Tuesday: The Secret Calendar

Welcome back to TTRPG Tuesday! Have I done any this year? Looks like no! On pace to be a pretty low-posting year I guess. Today I actually have a full-fledged one pager TTRPG to share.  I was listening to a Ludology with Camilla Zamboni as the guest and was inspired by her collection Roll for Learning.  The Secret Calendar came to me pretty much fully formed as I walked and listened to the episode, though I do want to acquire RfL to get layout inspo. Anyhow, the first draft can be found HERE .  I think this could be a fun activity for students (was also thinking of Wolfenoot) and maybe I’ll publish it or submit it at some point. Okay I’m out of practice so that's it buh bye!
Post a Comment
Read more