by Jim Cote
For a few years now, I have been designing a game, mostly in my head. While I do have pages of notes, the majority of the game is in a fuzzy mental form. I find that as soon as I start typing something up, the cool fuzziness of my ideas become concrete, losing something in the process. So I have been reluctant to document much. Now I'm starting to feel that talking about it here (to myself) might help motivate me.As I said this is not a new design that I am just starting to work out. It's quite mature in some areas, and half-way there in others. But I am going to start from the beginning, so to speak. While I encourage discussion, I am not looking for a co-designer. If any publishers like what I am describing and want to get in early (TMG?), you know where to reach me.
;)
With that, here begins the first of many posts on my yet-unnamed Solo Fantasy Adventure Role-Playing Board Game (SFARPBG):
First of all, what it's not:
This game is not Mage Knight: I was crestfallen when I first saw MK released, much in the same way that Scott Nicholson was when Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar came out. But my game is nothing like this. It is not a euro (though it will have many euro sensibilities). It has no puzzles. It has no fixed game length. It has no prepared map. You play a single character actually adventuring. More on that below.
This game is not Magic Realm: While I like this game quick a bit, it is dated in its systems. And like MK, MR is timed, the board is fixed(-ish) and is known(-ish), and you have specific goals (that you pick for yourself). You also play a specific character that doesn't change much if at all.
Now what it is:
Solo: I am really starting to enjoy solo gaming, partly because it allows me to play any time I want even if no one else has the time, and partly because there's a certain zen/focus that I cannot achieve socially. While this game is being designed as a solo game, multiple players could potentially play it, in mostly solitaire fashion. At this point, I'm not going to burden myself with working out any multi-player interactions or conflicts. Nothing about the solo game will be sacrificed for the sake of putting "1-4 players" on the box. Did I just say "box"? So presumptuous.
Fantasy: This is an easy choice. It combines a very low technology medieval theme with monsters and magic. These must be mixed in carefully, so as not to make special things mundane. I'll just teleport over here, disintegrate these 3 dragons, and be back in time for breakfast. Monsters should be scary. Magic should be hard to learn. Death should be a serious problem. This isn't simply my idea of how a fantasy world should work, but a comment on game design in general. It should be fun because it's hard. I hear stories of D&D groups where every character is maxed out, has the best equipment, weapons, and armor you can possibly enchant, and can only find a challenge fighting the gods themselves. Sounds fun actually, but I want to earn it. And while I'm on the subject of escalation: think of how D&D typically works. The party plays some number of sessions, the characters level up, and the DM makes proportionally tougher scenarios. You never win. It's just a journey. Enjoy it.
Adventure: To me, "adventure" implies outdoor exploration (as opposed to an indoor dungeon crawl). And "exploration" implies the unknown. If you go somewhere you've never been, then you don't know the land at all. You don't know what anything's called. So if you are looking for The Black Peaks, and see a mountain range in the distance, you won't know if that's what you are looking for unless you ask someone. Is anyone around to ask? Maybe there are other ways (natural and unnatural) to obtain knowledge. Seriously, Carcassonne and Entdecker feel more like adventure games to me that Mage Knight or Magic Realm. I want to explore an unknown land, getting to know it and its people. I want to make my own story.
Role-Playing: There are 2 common definitions to this: controlling a character, and acting the part. What I mean is the former. You will have a character sheet. It will be analogous to those of real RPG's, but I will be chucking out a lot of the old RPG baggage in favor of a more streamlined and rich system that also satisfies my criteria above.
Board Game: I played a lot of Dungeons & Dragons in my day from version 1 through 3.5. It was especially good in college. We had a great group, and a fantastic DM. These days, it's tough to make it happen at all, and I don't think we could ever recreate what we had before. I want to play a board game that presents me with a "believable" and immersive fantasy world, and let's me explore it to my heart's content, without the need for anyone to write the "module".
Most of the following will be teasers. I intend to discuss a different system or idea with each post.
So what is this game? It's essentially a sandbox, much like Minecraft and Fallout 3. You explore where you want, at the pace you want, being as careful or careless as you want. The game ends if you die or decide to stop playing, although there could easily be smaller scenarios for learning the game or for a short-term challenge. I want to be able play the same game for a year, and be engaged the whole time without it becoming boringly easy or ridiculously difficult. I'm still not sure if that's possible.
There are no classes. Everything is skill based. You decide how to improve yourself. All skills work the same way. Have some skill points to spend? There are going to be tough choices. Do you really want to spend 4 skill points going from level 3 to level 4 in melee, or would you prefer level 1 in four different skills? Some skills are hierarchical, kind of like a tech tree, except that it's still levels of each. For example, you can't go up in sub-skill B more levels than its parent skill A. You could potentially dabble in both white (divine) and black (dark) magic (among other colors), but at what cost? Here's another teaser: Are there any games that manifest luck as a skill? Probably, but I just don't know them. What about lore (other than the completely random "roll against your lore to succeed")?
This game is complex, but elegant. There will be some "accounting", but it should also have a flow to it. You should be spending most of your attention thinking about what you are doing, rather than updating the game state. That said, this game has time (year, seasons, month, week, day/night, hours) and weather (clouds, rain, snow, wind, fog, frozen lakes, hot/cold). It gets colder in the winter and at night. Some things can only happen during a full moon (guess?), or at night, or in the fog, or in certain terrain, etc. It's easier to be sneaky in the wind or rain, but more difficult to light a fire. You get tired, hungry, ill, poisoned, cursed, etc. What will you do if you find yourself injured in the mountains, 2 days from the nearest village, and have no food? Maybe if you could just sleep a little here in the dark forest with the wolves howling all around you, you'd wake up with just a little magical power restored.
This game is a board game. The map is formed using multi-hex tiles in between the sizes in Attika and Antiquity. When you have an encounter, there are more map boards based on your terrain (a la Titan, but bigger) on which to engage in tactical combat. There is also a game state board where you track date/time, weather, etc. It would also be possible to add a dungeon crawl element (to the game directly or as an expansion) and have the game generate dungeon tiles as you explored, similar to the adventure system, but rectangular. If I could have my choice, all of the art and graphics would be done by Karim Chakroun.
This game has dice. They are all 6-sided, but come in three different colors with custom values on them. The idea is not unique, of course, but the specific distribution of values provides the framework upon which many of the game systems are designed: quests/encounters, combat, etc.
This game has monsters. In fact, it has a chart per terrain type, plus a chart for towns/villages, and special charts for undead and otherworldly. Each chart contains 15 or so unique entries, making for more than 100 nasties to play with, each with different attributes, defenses, aggressiveness, "fighting styles", etc.
This game has cards: an event deck and a quest deck, but very little is "canned". The event deck manages encounters, changes in the weather, changes to your character's state (hunger, fatigue, healing, etc.), and quests. Changes in the weather are almost never purely random. If it's hot and sunny today, it's almost impossible that it will be freezing and snowy tomorrow. Your character does not get instantly hungry or tired. It does not even happen on a schedule. As the "random clocks tick", you get more hungry and tired, but decide for yourself when to eat and sleep. You do not "heal a point overnight" as with some RPG's. I'll go into detail about the hit point system in another post. It's quite unique, I think.
Like the Fallout system, you can stumble onto one or more quests. Most give you various things to do in order to gain extra rewards. Some "quests" might trigger a bad event that will continue until you do something. Maybe you will find something in your travels for one quest that will help you with another. The quest deck specifies the framework for quests, the details being filled in when you draw a card. Having many quests gives you a lot of options. I am still trying to decide if there's a quest limit and if it should be skill-based. Not really a very thematic idea, but I'd rather not have pages of notes for dozens of quests be the norm.
An idea that I just had today: Wouldn't it be fun to have a nemesis? Someone (or some thing) that just didn't like you, or that you fought and one of you got away. Someone (or some thing) that might be out looking for you...
So what's the market for this game? Me. I am designing it based on exactly what I want to play, not on what I think will sell, and not on popular trends. And ironically, I think that may make the game turn out more appealing.
Thanks for reading. If you have any feedback at this point, the thing I'd be most interested in hearing is: Did any of the above turn you off, or strike you as a unique idea?