Castle Panic

I bought Castle Panic this weekend, primarily to play with my kids, who are quite enamored with Plants vs. Zombies. And it works quite well as a fun co-op with kids. I imagine it would work very well as a good gateway/party game for adults who don't know better about board games.

The simplicity of this game just screams variants. I'll probably wind up applying some rules form my old Doppleganger design, to create a nice traitor variant, even though a lot of this seems stolen from Battlestar Galactica at this point.

Things such as:

-- Players are dealt loyalty cards at the start of the game.
-- All cards are held as closed.
-- Discard pile is face down.
-- Player select 2 monsters, and return 1 to the stock, while playing the other one face down to the board. While moving normally, the monsters are turned up with the first hit; all effects occur then.

I may have to limit trading a bit to counter the effect of the players having control over the monsters.

Also, there would have to be some kind of accusation element added into it. I'll have to think about that for the time being.

The Value of Risk

It's somewhat ironic that in my last post, I bring up the Prisoner's Dilemma. To recap, my personal feeling of PD is that, while it's an interesting game theory question within itself, it doesn't play out very well in real life, in that it doesn't take into much emotion, or the value of emotion too much, derived from the situation that the "player" may be in at any given time. Additionally, I'm not sure how you can truly test the game without a value of risk involved. Sure you can play the game repeatedly in your kitchen room, deciding "guess I'm going to jail for 5 years now!" because of your choice (and of the choice of your traitorous compatriot).

But it is a different situation entirely to be locked up in a police station, presented with the same choice FOR REAL, not knowing if your buddy is blabbing in the interview room next door.

I guess I should also note here that I am not a game theorist! I don't even play one on TV.

Another aspect is that I am very hard pressed to come up with a good game that employs PD. At the root of PD is this: in general, all players moderately "share a win" if they stick together; but at what point is one player willing to break ranks to heavily "win singularily" while tossing the other players into an abyss. Of course, each player knows this option exists, but they have no idea if any other player has taken the bait.

Negotiation games such as Diplomacy don't count, since usually games like this are targeted at having only one winner; it is inevitable that someone must do some backstabbing to get ahead, and there is no real sense of a shared win. Additionally, traitor games don't count either; while players cooperate against a hidden, single foe, players are given roles, and they must perform them as expected. Now, if all players started out co-operative, but were given a choice somewhere in the game to turn secretly bad, then we might have something! But I know of no such game currently out there, not to say that it doesn't exist.

And so, here's where the irony begins.

I've been reworking Doppleganger recently. Thematically, Doppleganger is about a team of UFO believers who have broken into a deserted Area 51 outpost in the Nevada Desert. And while they have found clear evidence of alien life that has visited Earth, their vehicles and communication equipment have been sabotaged. The players must work together to escape the desert to civilization.

(I hesitate to link Doppleganger to anything at the moment...I'm not quite prepared to release Doppleganger 2.0 to the wild, and the version of Doppleganger that is currently online is missing the key trait that I am discussing here. But you can view the old version on the list of links to the right.)

At it's heart, Doppleganger is a secret traitor game; the players are working together to overcome various desert obstacles. However, there may be an alien doppleganger in their midst, trying to make sure that the team does not reach civilization. Originally, as shown in version 1.0,there are two basic win conditions: if any amount of humans makes it to civilization, the humans win. If all human players expire in the desert, the alien wins. It's simple enough.

In re-working the game, I've thought about how to create a greater sense of paranoia amongst the players. Obviously, the alien player must be careful to hide his destructive action within the team, but how can the game system "help out" the alien by naturally creating a situation where human players can find EVERYONE suspicious?

The Prisoner's Dilemma offers an interesting solution to this. It's fairly simple; let the game give secret offers to the humans to let them have a large singular win at the expense of helping out the lesser shared win.

So, not only are the humans on the lookout for suspicious behaviors from an enemy alien, but they all know that the other players will be offered potential sweet deals during the game to break ranks for the fellowship. For a player to win the game, he must rely on his partners to work together, because if they don't work as a team, it is impossible to win individually.

Here's how it works.

As the team wanders the desert (tiles that are drawn and placed, creating a desert map), when a player moves the team to a Crash Site location, that player gets to distribute XX amount of Supply Cards as shown on the tile. Distributing a Supply Card works like this, the player draws 2, discards one (face down), and then can keep the remaining card, or give it to another player.

For the most part, the Supply Deck is primarily built of supply cards that can be used to overcome obstacles. But a small amount of cards are scoring cards, cards that score points at the end of the game ONLY if that player reaches civilization safely. The question becomes:

Is a player willing to keep a scoring card which provides no help to the team to reach it's goal, or "take one for the team" and keep a supply card that can be used to help overcome an obstacle?

Of course, the Alien player could simply hand over a Scoring card to a human to cause problems in the ranks. But won't the player who received the card now realize that the ONLY reason this card was passed to him would be that the player handing the card over is the alien for the sole purpose of messing with the team? Does this player now alert the team to the alien presence, at the risk of revealing that he now has a scoring card?

A lot of these decisions fall under the category of what the Value of Risk currently is in the game. Most likely, early in the game, humans will not want to have anything to do with the scoring cards; it is in their best interest to stockpile supply cards. But the value of the risk in terms of needing supply cards change as it becomes apparent that the team is having an easy time (or not) crossing the desert. Or at least, the risky visual appearance of a player stockpiling supply cards, but never playing them, because, most likely, they are worthless scoring cards when it comes to overcoming obstacles.

So, at some point, if the team members feel that they are close to escaping, it stops becoming a team effort, and instead becomes a secret individual effort to be the sole winner. But at what point does this become prudent? Each player is assumed to have their own value of this risk, and potentially understanding what the value of risk is for each player they are playing with.

Which I think captures the Prisoner's Dilemma nicely. In theory, anyway.

There's some amount of cleverness with the scoring cards themselves, actually, as each card has a different value of risk. There are simple cards, such as awarding points for each supply card that the escaping human holds at the game. This might be worth grabbing early if everyone is holding a handful of cards.

But the more complicated cards or more interesting.

One scoring card, "The Infection," actually lets the player switch sides to the alien side. This card is interesting in terms of when it's potentially kept. It's worth keeping later in the game if it appears that the humans are a part of a lost cause.

Even better, an alien can give this card to another player to "infect" him.

But the most creative use would be this:
There is a scoring card, known as "The Hunter." This human scores points if he survives AND if an alien has been killed off (yes, players can vote off other players to kill them). So, an interesting play would be to keep the Hunter card, and then, if you draw the Infection, "infect" another player, and then persuade the group kill off the infected player.

Other scoring cards include cards that score points for the number of players that survive, and it's ying-yang, for the number of players that died.

With a little hope, this should make for an interesting experience in growing paranoia of what everyone's motives really are. After all, everyone has a little villainy in them!

("alien shadow" image blatantly stolen from www.punchstock.com)

June 2005 - Doppleganger

Since BGDF has moved over to a new server, they will eventually lose all of their old posting. So now I have to keep a record of my showdown entries somewhere else.

With this game, I have finally archived all of my GDS entries. WHEW!

This was my first attempt at an entry. While everyone thought it was an excellent concept, it wound up in fifth place due to the fact that it didn't meet the "pick up and drop off" requirements (something that I completely forgot about when working on it). My updated version of the game has this element NOW; of course, the rules are a bit longer than 800 words, too. I'm still not sure how viable the game is in it's current form; at some point in the distant future, I may even be able to play it.

I've learned quite a few tricks since this first attempt at creating "award winning" GDS entries. Namely:
1) Keep it simple. First of all, you have only 800 words. That's not a lot. Secondly, people don't vote for games that they can't understand.
2) Really, REALLY, make sure you have met all of the requirements. In general, people don't have the time to go over all the entries with a fine-toothed comb. And so, people are looking for any simple way to pare down the list quickly. And at first glance, if the game doesn't meet the requirements, it gets chopped off the possible vote-getters quickly.
3) Along with number 2 above, never, EVER go above 800 words. Unless you want your game passed by like a hitchhiker on the side of the road with a severed head in his hand.



Dopplegangler: Unleashed From Groom Lake!
OBJECT: Investigating the abandoned Groom Lake test site, the players have found conclusive evidence of past Alien experiments. However, their vehicles have been sabotaged. Now, the team is trying to cross the desert to civilization with their proof, but one team member has been taken over by an Alien, trying to foil their plans.

COMPONENTS:
CHARACTER CARDS and WIN CONDITIONS:
Each player gets one hidden character card.

One player will be randomly assigned the ALIEN card. If all HUMANS and the BOUNTY HUNTER die before reaching civilization, the ALIEN wins, regardless if he is still alive.

One player is an ALIEN BOUNTY HUNTER. The BOUNTY HUNTER wins solely if he kills the ALIEN.

The rest of the players are HUMANS. HUMANS who are still living who make it to a Civilization tile win the game.

DESERT TILES:
There is one tile designated as GROOM LAKE (the start tile). Tiles are drawn and placed to form a map of the Desert. Also, some tiles have Events on them which must be followed.

THE GROUP:
The Group pawn starts on the Groom Lake tile. The rest of the tiles are divided into three piles, shuffled, and placed face down. The three piles are determined by icons on the back of the tiles: 3,6, and compass.

SUPPLY CARDS:
Each player draws 12 Supply cards, and discard 6 at the start of the game. ALL SUPPLY CARDS CANNOT BE SHOWN TO ANY OTHER PLAYER UNTIL THEY ARE PLAYED DURING THE GAME.

HAZARD CHITS:
HAZARD chits are played on marked Desert Tiles as they are revealed. The Group cannot move onto a Desert Tile unless the Hazard on the tile is removed by the group discarding the appropriate Supply Cards, or possibly by discarding a life token.

LIFE TOKENS:
Each player starts with 5 Life tokens. Player with no life tokens have died.

A PLAYERS TURN:
A player has two Desert actions:
--Scout the area.
--Move the group to a neighboring Desert Tile.

SCOUT THE AREA:
The player picks up two Desert Tiles. HE CANNOT SHOW THESE TILES TO ANYONE ELSE. He chooses one, and discards the other. If the group is 3 or less tiles away from Groom Lake, he takes tiles from the “3” pile of tiles. If the group is 6,5, or 4 tiles away from Groom Lake, he takes tiles from the “6” pile. otherwise, he takes the tiles from the “Compass” pile.

If the tile shows a prt of the desert, he must place it next to the tile that the group is currently on, the graphic edge elements must match (ie, the paths must continue across both tiles). If the tile cannont be placed next to the current tile the group is on, the player loses a life token and places the tile anywhere on the board. Again, the graphic elements along the edges must match.

If the tile indicates that it has a Hazard, the player draws two Hazard chits, selects one, and places it face down on the tile, discarding the other one. PLAYERS CANNOT SHOW TO THE OTHER PLAYERS OR DISCUSS FACE DOWN OR DISCARDED HAZARD CHITS until they are flipped over during play.

If the tile is an Event tile, the players must follow the directions of the Event.

Event tiles can let player find supplies, swap character cards, or result in life token/supply loss.

MOVE THE GROUP:
M the pawn to the next tile as long as it follows a path.

Moving to a town (civilization) tile wins the game for all remaining Humans.

If the tile has a Hazard chit on it, it is flipped over, and the players must play Supply cards and/or Life tokens to remove the Hazard. If the Hazard is not removed, the Group token is moved back to the previous tile.

Some Hazards require cooperative card play from the entire group; other Hazards require play from each player individually.

ALIEN ACCUSATION:
After any player’s turn, any player may accuse another player of being the Alien. Then a vote is taken to determine if the accused player should be killed (removed from the game). If a simple majority vote a player to be an Alien, then that player is removed from the game. DO NOT LOOK AT HIS CHARACTER CARD.

Instead of taking a vote, the Alien Bounty Hunter may reveal his character card, and independently kill another player. That player’s character card is flipped over. If the Bounty Hunter selected the Alien player, the game is over, and the Bounty Hunter wins. If the player is a Human, the Bounty Hunter and his target are removed from the game.

When a player is removed, his supply cards are dealt randomly to the remaining players.