This is a board game concept I'm in the early stages of poking at, and I'd appreciate any feedback you all have. Each player plays as a mage attempting to defeat the other players in a last-man-standing duel of cunning and wizardry. The game takes place on a hex grid; each player can, on their turn, move to an adjacent hex grid, and cast a spell. Casting a spell involves choosing a spellcard from their hand (each player has an identical hand), putting it face-down on the table, and putting a d6 on it as a timer. Most spells also require placing a targeting token onto the board; the targeting token is matched to the d6 by color so you can recognize each. Each turn, the player then decrements the d6 on the spellcard; when the counter hits zero, the spell activates. So for example, on my turn, I decide to cast a fireball at you. I have three different Fireball spells to choose from, with varying casting times and levels of power. I choose the 2-turn version, put it face-down on the table, and put a d6 on it with the 2 on the die facing up. I then put a targeting marker on a hex near you. Two turns later, if you're in the targeted hex or an adjacent hex, then you get hit by the fireball and take damage. Now obviously, in this simple example you'd see the spell coming and easily be able to dodge it. My plan is to have enough different kinds of spells and areas of effect that the game turns into a bunch of doublethink as people try to figure out what their opponents are casting, how to avoid them, and what counterspells to use. Sufficiently-clever players also ought to be able to trap their opponents so at least one spell will land. At the moment, here's the different kinds of areas of effect I have: * Any: one visible hex * Ball: hits the target hex and all hexes within a given distance of the target hex. * Ring: as Ball, but hollow * Ray: hits all hexes on a bent line out from the player, with the ray never doubling back on itself nor turning more than 60° at one time. * Wall: hits a line of hexes centered on the target hex. Wall spells will need three variations for each possible direction (i.e. the facing of the wall depends on which spellcard you pick). * Player: affects chosen player. Target markers for these spells would be played on the sideboard. And here's some sample spells: * Fireball (Ball): deals damage to players in area of effect (1/7/19 hexes depending on casting time) * Lightning Bolt (Ray) (Range scales with casting time): All units on affected hexes take damage. * Meditation (Player): Retrieve 1 spell from your discard pile per turn used to cast. * Pyroclastic Flow (Ray): affected hexes turn into magma, which deals damage when players end their turns on it. Players in affected hexes immediately take damage. * Frostwyrm's Breath (Ray): affected hexes turn into ice, which cannot be stopped on (players moving onto ice move onto the next hex automatically). Players in affected hexes are pushed back and take damage. * Teleport (Any): move to the target hex. Faster-casting versions deal damage to you. * Blink (Player): move to a hex within N hexes of your current position (N increases with casting time; starts at 1) * Haste (Player): Set the d6 for this spellcard to N. For the duration of the spell, you may move 2 hexes instead of 1 on your turn. * Knife (Adjacent): Deal damage to adjacent player. No casting time; do not discard after use. * Feint (Any): Choose any casting time for this spell. No effect when it is cast; do not discard after use. * Gravity Flux (Ball): all affected units must move towards the center of the ring, if possible. If they are blocked (either by trees or by another unit) or are already on the center hex, they take damage instead. * Molten Cage (Ring): Turn hexes surrounding the target hex into magma. * Warp Spell (Any): Move the target for an opponent's spell one hex in any direction. * Sanctuary (Ball): Convert affected hexes to grassland, which is ordinary terrain. * Thicket (Wall): Convert affected hexes to forest, which cannot be seen or moved through. Unseen tiles cannot be targeted (already-targeted spells still cast). * Counterspell (Any): cancels one uncast spell. * Mind Probe (Player): You may look at one unrevealed spell card. * Nullify (Ball): All spells with target tokens in the affected area are canceled. What I'm looking for mostly is ideas for new spells and areas of effect, but I'd love any advice or recommendations you have. I'm thinking of using my Heroscape set for the board and wizards; mostly what I need is the cards and three differently-colored d6s for each player. One concern I have is that the game needs to end gracefully in a reasonable timeframe (not more than an hour at the very most, I would think, with a half-hour to 45 minutes being preferable). As it stands, it seems like sufficiently-agile players could dodge spells indefinitely. If you have suggestions for a natural way to force a conclusion, I'd love to hear them. A second concern is how to handle the terrain changes. They're going to need to be done on a per-hex basis, and I just don't know a good way to handle that.

If each player has the identical hand, they have every possible spell (and you gave quite a few). This would cause a HUGE learning curve, with more experienced players having a giant advantage, knowing how different spells work. Having some sort of library/deck system would be much simpler, and likely more balanced.

Some questions:
Ray seems to be basically able to hit anything, unless I'm confused. It's from your wizard to any spot, right?
You mention damage, but not what it means. HP system? Regenerative?

Also, it seems like the goal will be to layer spell on top of spell on top of spell, hitting the opponent six different ways over the course of one turn. But you have one spell (nullify) that would seem to quickly prevent any kind of assault. dunno how that works out

Ideas:
Way's to bring it to a conclusion:

Spellwarp: every time an area is targeted, there's a 1/6 chance it gets spellwarped. Spellwarped hexes deal damage to everyone on it, and last until the game ends. Furthermore, spellwarped hexes gradually spread: every six turns they envelope the hexes around them.

It's an honorable duel: every turn roll 2d6. If the result is 3 or under, whoever took the least damage looses (ala some W40k modes)

Magic is in the air: every turn, roll 2d6. If the result is 2, all spells take half time to complete, and deal double damage. Or have bigger splash. Whatever.

Cunning strategy and random chance are mutually exclusive. The more random chance, the less strategy.

Also, the shear number of spells and variations will make it difficult to strategize. If I can keep track of what spells my opponent has used (Assuming they cannot be reused), I can use that information against him.

I'd say it's too complex right now. There are too many variations in spell effect areas and too many different spells.

DoomHasCome: a deck system could work (each player has 30 cards and a hand of 5, say). But to play effectively, you'll need to know what spells exist anyway. A certain amount of learning curve is unavoidable, though I don't want it to be gratuitous. For your questions:

* Ray probably needs some work. It's from your wizard to a spot, though the range of a given ray may depend on the power of the spell you cast (e.g. lightning bolt might have range increments of 3 and 6 hexes). So it can only hit things in a 120° arc in front of you, though I grant that's still pretty broad. If you have better ideas, I'm all ears. I don't want to do the piece of string mechanic because it makes figuring out which hexes exactly get hit a bit clunky (and/or makes rays hit too many hexes).

* Damage was intentionally left vague. Currently I'm assuming each player has a pool of health, which doesn't regenerate -- any healing spells I can think of would either be entirely too useful or practically useless, so I'm just leaving them out, and natural regeneration would just serve to drag the game out by encouraging people to play possum.

* Layering: you can only cast one spell each turn, and you can only have three active spells at a time. Obviously these numbers are subject to being tweaked, but they still shouldn't allow for you to set up a massive combination on your own. That said, Nullify might be overpowered (and/or take too long to cast to be useful). I was just throwing ideas out there.

For your suggestions to end the game:

* "Spellwarping" or a similar "the world gradually becomes painful to walk on" mechanic sounds like it could work. It could simply be "every N turns, the outer edge of the game board drops away", gradually putting players in a tighter and tighter arena.

* I admit I haven't played WH40k, but it sounds to me like an "Oops, you took less damage than I do, I guess I lose" end to the game is a bit anticlimactic. The stakes are greater when your life's on the line, y'know?

* Some mechanism to just make the spells more deadly could also work, though having it occur randomly makes planning rather difficult. My main concern here would be having to have rules for making the spells more powerful.


Deyja: if I limit the number of spells available, then it seems to me that players would be able to predict with great accuracy what any spell being cast is, which would lead to them always being able to dodge the spells. Do you have a suggestion for dealing with that?

Rays go from your wizard in straight line through a neighboring hex up to x spaces, with one curve. Or whatever. But they're pretty easy to predict. You have to give a target hex that the ray passes through when you cast the spell, but you can move, and therefore alter the effected squares. The one turn should allow you to hit the spot no matter what, basically.

Ultimately, every game has some form of learning curve. You just try and minimize it for casual game-play. Having every spell optional will make new players feel overwhelmed, and will allow older players to memorize combos. Having them only have access to a fraction will reduce this.

Having a gradually shrinking arena could work, except if the game got too small without anyone dying, it would just become a melee fight. Oh well. Might work. Playtest it out.

W40K's random nature actually works. It only starts triggering after the fifth turn, usually, when things are mostly already dead. It's an anti-turtle measure. It actually usually makes sense, as it represents that a war of attrition will then proceed, and whoever had the upper hand will win.


Crazy idea: you hide which spells you cast, merely placing a blast marker/counter. Then you reveal what it was. The enemy has no idea if it is a ray, ball, ring, wall, or feint. Gameplay would be crazy, with players trying to guess what the opponent still has.

I threw together this spell list today. It's still very rough -- I basically made up all the numbers, and have no idea how much health players should have. The "dx" in the spell descriptions refers to the die you use as a counter when casting the spell. You get a d4, a d6, and a d8 to use as counters. So if you use the d8 to cast a fireball, it'll potentially be more damaging than if you use a d4. But you can only have three spells out at a time, so you can't just spam the d8 all the time.

My plan is for pits to kill the player's movement for one turn (so if you get dropped into one, then you can't move on your next turn, but the turn after that you can move normally).

I hope to be able to playtest this at the gaming group tomorrow. I need to get the cards and some targeting tokens printed out first, but everything else is ready at hand. I'm going to give the contracting-gameboard approach to limiting playtime a shot. Say, every 4 turns the exterior tiles are removed from the game.

As always, any feedback is welcome.

You may want to do a board mockup and post that. The pits were a bit confusing: how do they work? Do they start on the board? Are they hidden in some way? No idea.

It's also still unclear how some of the rules work, you may want to clarify that:
are you still doing a system where you have every possible spell playable starts in your hand? Or a deck system, with limited hands? Or what?
How do rays work?

Clarifications are good. Try making a design document that contains the current version of the rules.

This sounds like it would be fun. I especially like the mechanic of watching a die count down on a spell where you don't have any idea what it is, especially if its owner is trying to suppress a diabolical grin. Sounds like a good, high-tension strategy/tactics game.

I suspect you're thinking about the ray thing too hard. The fact that it's on a discrete board makes it easy to express rays as simply a series of single-step movements, with restrictions on which direction it can turn. Players should probably be able to cast a ray in any initial direction; IMHO, facing direction is not something that should be significant in a turn-based game. I don't want to have to think about my location and my orientation.

One other spell effect you could have would be to create objects/creatures/whatever that move about the board. You could have a moving fireball that progressively moves across the board, or that follows a specific player until it hits or is destroyed. A wizard could create a little minion-creature that can move about independently. I also thought about a star-burst shaped area-effect, composed of a ball with six evenly-spaced outlying hexes, but I'm not sure that would be really useful. You've got that part covered pretty comprehensively. Just don't forget to add counterspells; these should probably not take as long to cast, and last long enough to cover a couple turns.

To balance the different dice, wouldn't you want to time the spell with the same die you use for damage? You can also make restrictions on which dice can be used for a spell, or variants of the same spell. For example, you could have different cards for the Lightning Bolt spell that differ only in the dice they are allowed to use. They could have maximums, or only allow one size of die. Actually, you might do that even if you keep the static times.

You could have a system where players are required to show which card they draw from a deck, after which they put it in their concealed hand. This way, people can know what spells are available to a specific person, but not which one they're using at the moment.

Terrain changes might be implemented as flat tokens that can be placed under tokens on the board. I'm not sure you should make visibility a gameplay element, though. It's very difficult to accept as "invisible" something which is very clearly visible to the player, and it can be difficult to calculate.

I don't really like the idea of shrinking the board. It feels like a cop-out. I think most other issues will shake out in play-testing, and you'll be able to find a way to set up the game so it finishes quickly.

Wow, what a messy brain-dump. Good luck.

Quote:

Original post by theOcelot One other spell effect you could have would be to create objects/creatures/whatever that move about the board. You could have a moving fireball that progressively moves across the board, or that follows a specific player until it hits or is destroyed. A wizard could create a little minion-creature that can move about independently.

Moving minions and spell effects around the board in addition to a single wizard seems a good strategic dimension to add; the original plan of simply surrounding the opponent with fixed hazards is narrow in comparison.

Another useful and simple tactical option would be to allow altering the warm-up/casting time of spells. An opponent that on his next turn would take cover from my lightning bolt that is due on my next turn could be surprised by my spending some resource (e.g. forfeiting to cast a spell this turn) to strike one turn earlier. Conversely, I could hasten his own lightning bolt in progress to waste it while I cannot be targeted (e.g he is facing the wrong way).

With more things to do, especially accumulated spells that progress in parallel, turns could become too large; not long enough to be boring (unless the rules are very clunky), but eventful enough to lead to excessive tricks and combos and strategic instability.
It might therefore be better to use micro-turns in which players choose only one action (starting a spell, moving a target, advance a spell in progress towards completion, running, dodging a spell, etc.), maybe combined with walking one hex.
Dungeons & Dragons might be a good inspiration for this approach, especially the third edition that has a clear classification of actions as free, full round, attacks of opportunity, etc. and simple options for what can be done in a round.

Quote:

Original post by Derakon One concern I have is that the game needs to end gracefully in a reasonable timeframe (not more than an hour at the very most, I would think, with a half-hour to 45 minutes being preferable). As it stands, it seems like sufficiently-agile players could dodge spells indefinitely. If you have suggestions for a natural way to force a conclusion, I'd love to hear them.

You can force the game to be a race rather than a siege with nonrenewable resources that are bound to run out or with a quantitative escalation in which attacks eventually exceed the best defenses.
Magic: the Gathering (a similarly card based game of similar wizard duels that you should be familiar with) has several instances of both:
- cards in one's library run out as players draw one per turn, with a nice to have safety net around 53 turns per player; it is a huge number, but this hard limit changes dramatically if one deliberately consumes more cards than normal, has his library "milled" by the opponent, recycles cards from other zones to the library, manages to skip drawing, etc. (you can adopt most of these mechanics directly);
- life points run out as there are orders of magnitude more opportunities to lose them than to gain them, and on top of that players are encouraged to convert life to something useful;
- poison counters are, by design, much easier to obtain than to shake off, as shown by the 9:1 ratio in the linked card list;
- exceptional win and loss conditions introduced by some cards are added threats that obviously never make the game longer;
- creatures usually attack and kill each other, eventually letting the player with an advantage progress from having stronger creatures to having more creatures to having unblocked creatures that slaughter the opponent; but in cases when attacking would be bad for both players, it doesn't take a lot of time to accumulate enough creatures and extra damage to suddenly tip the scales from a suicidal charge that leaves one open to a devastating counterattack to an overwhelming assault that wins the game;
- over the course of a game the casting cost of spells that can be played, and therefore their power, increases as land cards are accumulated; the capability to deal damage increases accordingly (stronger creatures, bigger attack spells) but defense is usually limited by card number instead (creatures to play in sufficient numbers to block enough attackers, counterspells that are traded card for card, spells that prevent all damage for one turn): failures to defend are not only cumulative but progressively more dangerous and bound to happen.

[Edited by - LorenzoGatti on November 27, 2009 7:30:30 AM]