Villains

I've been centering a lot of my prototype time on the Shipwreck game of late; as noted in this post, it has become more of an Indiana Jones-type adventure, where the game is about finding the clues through artifacts that lead the players to a final destination. And so, it continues; and I am strongly applying more thematic parts of that kind of adventure to the game.

Now, in this case, the word theme in the traditional sense of it being applied to board games would mean that I am taking characters and mythology from the movies series; well, this isn't the case. This is more about theme in the classical sense. In the sense that I am playing around with the ideas of running around the world is search of wacky magical artifacts, which have powers that can make you rich (the winner of the game), or can otherwise destroy you (put you is a losing position) due to your own moral compass.

One of the more interesting things to come out of the new direction that the game has taken is the idea of "playing the villain," which is something I haven't run across before in other games. Generally, this means you can play the "honest" way, which is full of hard work and a lot of money and actions being spent; or you can simply be the evil rogue, stealing need-to-use boats and hiring henchmen to steal artifacts. Or you can walk a fine line somewhere in between, and only play with treachery as a desperate last cause when needed. And of course, much like the Indiana Jones movies, those who take the easy, more villainous route, will most likely pay the piper when the "check comes due."

In general, the idea works like this: There's a set of rules how to obtain various important things in the game; these typically require some amount of money and actions to obtain. But, if you decide to not pay those fees in acquiring these things, you gain Villainy points.

Each artifact has a randomly (and unknown) Villainy threshold. Once a player acquires the artifact, the threshold becomes known, and if the player's Villainy is higher than the artifact, well, in true Indiana Jones fashion, the artifact turns on its owner and "bad things happen" to its owner.

From a design standpoint, I think it's an interesting concept as most games usually thematically assign a role to the player, either the good guy or bad (depending on the point of view). Then it is up to the player to win the game within the definition of that character. In this case, the player is self-defining their own character; do they see themselves as the honorable treasure hunter, or as the collector who collects through any means necessary? Are you Indiana Jones, or Rene Belloq? It's a risk/reward system where taking the low road early pays quick dividends; but the player does not know what the true risks even are (due to the random thresholds of the artifacts). So, a large part of the game is playing chicken with one's villainous self, while dealing with the race against the other players.

(I guess I should mention that there are not enough artifacts to go around for all players, so there NEED to be at least a little villainous streak in everybody. Let's face it, Dr. Jones was never one to shy against a little chicanery when times called for it.)

It also adds another layer of choice to the game. It's not just a racing logic puzzle anymore, where you choices were determined simply by trying to figure out the most efficient way to get the next part of the puzzle that you need. Now it's more about how you go about chasing down your clues long term, as decisions to use Villiany may or may not come back to bite you later on.

The closest that can find to this mechanism would be in Cleopatra and the Society of Architects, where you gain corruption tokens for using sub-standard building materials. I've never played it; I assume it's pretty close to what I'm talking about. And I guess that there must be other games out there that do this kind of thing.

How did this come about; like most elements of Eureka moments, it's about solving problems with the design. In the last playtest, I really wanted a strategy to exist where a player could simply spend all their time collecting money, while other players are doing the hard work. Then the money rich player could simply hire more goons and steal the artifacts away from the other players. However, even though no one attempted that strategy, it seemed pretty clear that it was the optimal one.

While suggestions came in about limiting what a player could do with regards to the money-rich strategy, I preferred to still let the player decide to take it or not, as opposed to the game limiting the collection of funds or steals in some way. The player SHOULD be able to take the role of the extremely wealthy collector if he wanted to, instead of the down-and-dirty tomb raider.

And hence the Villainy count was born, where every time the player tried to steal an artifact, he get dinged for a Villainy. Then it became second nature just to apply this concept to all of the other aspects of the game, and make it a prominent feature of the game.

**After all, the concept of tomb robbing, regardless of reasons for the robbing, is a little villainous no mater how you look at it.

The leash

Occasionally, I try to write up a post that focuses in on a design aspect, using examples with something I'm currently working on. This is one of those posts. However, it feels like it came out a little more jumbled than it should have, and for that, I apologize.

Anyway, on with the show...

Early game prototyping can be thought of like walking an insanely active dog; you want it to be happy and go about following it's desired course, but you need to keep it under some amount of restraint, otherwise it gets away from you.

While I have no concrete evidence of this, my personal experience is that good games (like most creative processes) develop "on their own" fairly naturally with only gentle shoves and yanks of "the leash" as guides. It's a careful balancing act, games left to run by themselves become a mess pretty quickly, and require quite a bit of leashing mid-way in the design. And games that are under the heavy hand of the designer leash, with no intentions of wavering away from the original plan. Well, they don't go any where much at all. Every game project that I've been involved with professionally was never, ever considered to be "done" by the creators; just "finished enough" given the tightrope walk between the various constraints of schedules and finances on one side, and creative design work on the other. They are never perfect, but close enough to almost be happy with the final the output, as there is always at least one more bit of polish to clean up, or one more feature to add that the game absolutely requires, but at some point, as a designer, you have to stop, and move on.

The development process usually works like this (of course, your mileage may differ). Early on, after settling in on one or two "gimmicks" that the game is going to based around, I let the game go, adding features, or doing whatever the game feels like it needs. Ultimately, the gimmicks are the leash; these are the things that will guide the decisions made for the rest of the design process. But I allow the game to go off and explore other possibilities. Until, of course, the game has now become so bloated, or confusing, or misguided, that now is the time to yank the leash, and get the game back on a course. Editing out extra rules, or components, or things that don't seem to affect the original gimmicks, etc.

In most cases, letting the game "roam free" doesn't happen and develop in a vacuum. They require the ability to bounce off walls, knocking into other people, and going through various filters that other people have, through your usual playtesting experiences. In fact, the first few playtesting sessions of a game probably should mostly focus on the main gimmicks, making sure that they even work, without much attention to the side effects generated by the game running it's own course. These additions (and subtractions) should naturally come and go as they please.

Recently, I've been playing around with the Shipwrecks game (the current version can be downloaded off in the "Things To Play" section in the sidebar, listed as "Dark Water Salvage"). There's been a nice progression of the main gimmick, along with various levels of fluctuating game-defining rules.

Luckily, I'm a member of the Board Gamer Designers Workshop, which is a small group of geekiness dedicated to just playing game prototypes of our own creation. A sort of a bi-weekly Protospiel. So, there's no need to torture real players who might not understand the concept of how prototypes work.

As is usual of my designs, the game went through a few revisions even before the first playtest. As I've noted in a previous post regarding the use of windowed cards for hidden data, the main gimmick of the game is hunting for shipwrecks that are "hidden" in a lake. This hidden information system was originally being developed as a haunted house game; but things "weren't meshing" well at that point. This system initially was testing for directions using simple binary coding (Y or N). The binary "bar code" worked with deducing items back when it was a haunted house game, but now the game involved searching for a location, and the game cried out for a modified version of the system that more closely relates to that action.




And so, while the gimmick was kept the same, the data was reversed. By testing from various locations on the game board, you can get directional information regarding where a location is in relationship to the testing location. In this case to the left, the location is Southwest of the city of Missaukee (when Missaukee is stacked on top of the location card). So, while "the leash" of the stacked cards revealing hidden information is kept, the game was still allowed to form naturally around it.

During the first playtest, one of the main focal points was watching to see if this mechanic would actually work (it did). Other elements of the game around it did not, but that's fine. As the core interest point of this game is based on the the searching and locating function of this mechanic, those are adjusted or removed, and tested again.

At this point, I'd like to point out that there's almost no sense of trying to balance scoring, or creating a more "interesting" map, or any kind of fine tuning. It's an early prototype, and the basic functions of the game are still being fleshed out. In fact, after finding a major rules break in the second playtest, it became obvious what some fixes were required, and what was still broken...there was no need to finish.

As an additional aside...

One of the games we played was very much of a loosey goosey party game, whose main goal was seemingly guessing random numbers. The only information that you had to go on was that the current number to guess is less than the previous number on a card. Basically, no strategy or skill, just wild guesses for the most part. And while the designer was happy with what he implemented, this IS a group dedicated to board game geekery, and simple random guessing games don't cut it.

The results that came out of the discussion at least sounds like an interesting game. At least playing the game mentally. It still keeps it's party game roots, but has some elements of a mind game. For the most part, it was an idea that was "let loose" to see where it would go. As is typical of a brainstorming session, no leashes are attached.

For the fun of it, I've dubbed the name of the "Vezzini," in honor of the greatest mental skills battle ever filmed, the Battle of Wits from "The Princess Bride."



I imagine that the game winds up being played in a "well, I picked this because I think you picked that because I figured you'll think I'll pick this" kind of manner. I also imagine that the game could be potentially be terrible, too. Of course, this is solely what I consider to be the best version discussed, I'm sure other would have different opinions.


Vezzini
A (potentially irritating) battle of wits for any group of players

Give every player a pad of paper and a pencil.
Someone will also need to keep track of a running point total for each player on a separate sheet of paper.
Agree to a Target Score that determines the winner.

THE GAME:
The game is player in rounds. In each round, the players will first determine who the Host is. Once a Host is determined, all players then battle the Host.

DETERMINE THE HOST:
All players write down a number secretly on their pad of paper.
All player's reveal their number.
The player who wrote down the LOWEST value number, that is not tied with another player's selection, becomes the Host. All other players become Active Opponents.


The Host scores points equal to the number he wrote down.

BATTLE THE HOST:
A Battle consists of three rounds, in each round the host secretly writes down a number that MUST be lower than the number he previously wrote down. In the case of the first round of the battle, the number he writes down must be lower than the number he wrote down to become the Host.

All Active Opponents now write down their guess. Opponents can ask questions; the Host can lie or bluff, or refuse to answer.

Once finished, Active Opponents reveal their guesses, and the Host reveals his number.

If an Active Opponent guesses correctly, they stay Active; an incorrect guess renders them Inactive, and out of the remaining battle rounds.

The Battle ends when all Opponents have become Inactive, or after three rounds of Battle have been played. All Opponents that are still Active after three rounds (they have successfully guessed the Host's number three times), win points equal to 2 times the amount of the initial number the Host selected to become the Host.

THE GAME IS OVER:
...when a player has earned points equal to or greater than the target score.