[Abandoned] - Age of Quests

[yeti_c]

Another thing you can do to enhance bonuses - is increase the amount of bonus you get from territories...

This would reward the player who travels and takes over territories. (Which is something that should be rewarded in an RPG game) and discourage people to turtle/rush.

The other thing to consider - is that your current theories are all based on 8 player games.

4 player games will have 2 characters each. So what gives a bonus to one of your characters - will take away a bonus from another... (if you have opposite alignments) - if you have the same then you double your bonus.

2 player games will have 4 characters each. - This will surely throw your balance out of whack?

One thing to cure this - is (I think) to remove the -2 for the treasure chests. - So if you hold a correct treasure - you get +2 - if you hold an incorrect treasure you get nothing - but you do stop others from holding it.

(Note if you have 2 characters of opposite alignment - treasure chests are useless to you).

C.

[DiM]

damn talk about screwups, i forgot you still can't chose starting terits and they are assigned randomly.
this means both treasure chests and alignment terits are useless.

in a 4 p game if a guy starts with 2 good characters he's at a big advantage than a person that starts with 1 evil and 1 good.

and even if i remove the minus bonuses this is still bad.

let's say player A starts with barbarian and paladin. he will get the altar bonuses for each and they will be double. if player B starts with cleric and witch he will get the altar bonuses for both and if i keep the minus bonus he will actually get nothing if i remove the minus and make it zero then he will still get half of what player 2 gets. this sucks

so clearly something needs to be done. treasure chests are easy, just make them give +2 for same alignment and 0 for different alignment but the starting altars are tricky.
one way would be to make each altar give a bonus only to the character that starts there. anyone else gets 0 but this will lead to a lower number of overall bonuses.

this means i must increase the bonuses found on the map. i don't want to increase the bonuses from skills or from treasure chests so maybe givingbonus for terits owned would work.

if i leave it a the default level then at 261 terits in an 8p game it would mean an average of 32.5 terits per player. that's 10-11 extra troops. in 4 player games it would be 21-22 troops per player. i think that might be just what's needed. incentive to go out and explore plus problem with minus bonuses solved.
thanks yeti

[yeti_c]

one way would be to make each altar give a bonus only to the character that starts there. anyone else gets 0 but this will lead to a lower number of overall bonuses.

How about "home altars" give double "away altars"?

C.

[yeti_c]

The other thing I suggest you do - is read the last 30 something pages of the Das Schloss topic - to make sure you fully understand the good/bad things that come out of not being able to kill someone... (In the end it looks like Das Schloss is going to allow a kill technique under extreme circumstances)

C.

[DiM]

one way would be to make each altar give a bonus only to the character that starts there. anyone else gets 0 but this will lead to a lower number of overall bonuses.

How about "home altars" give double "away altars"?

C.

i have nothing against this as long as i can fit it in the legend.
and i'll check the das schloss thread but i still want to make this map objective only. last i remember lack asked for maps that are objective only and except das schloss i don't think there had been other attempts.

[yeti_c]

and i'll check the das schloss thread but i still want to make this map objective only. last i remember lack asked for maps that are objective only and except das schloss i don't think there had been other attempts.

Correct.

C.

[edbeard]

I thought he just said 'Objective maps' not 'Objective only'


anyway, I stand by all my concerns. there needs to be a way for players to separate themselves from each other otherwise it'll turn into a stalemate. I'm not trying to be annoying and harp on this subject but it's inevitable. how are people supposed to gain an advantage when they each are getting +9 (not including territory bonus) to start with? this makes the other bonuses they get and the territory bonus they get less effective in giving them an advantage. a +2 when neither of you are getting a bonus versus a +2 when you're both getting +9

to be honest though until the map gets played we don't have any idea what'll happen.

[DiM]

what if....

1. you get +1 for 2 altar terits near your starting location
2. you get +1 for each foreign altar of same alignment and +1 for 2 terits from foreing altars of diff alignment
3. default terit bonus
4. everything else stays the same.


this translates into incentive for expanding and taking other altars and at the same time the initial bonus is only 5. this means getting a few skills gives you an upper hand and let's you take over other people, thus avoiding stalemates

[edbeard]

I think that's definitely a nice step forward. The only problem I foresee is that the guys at the top and bottom right aren't that close to other people whereas the barbarian is smack dab in the middle of everything. this could be bad for him. he's busy fighting with those guys. this could be good for him. it's easy for him to get more bonus quickly since foreign altars of a different alignment can be powerful. maybe this possibility of it being good or bad in itself is good because of the different strategies the barbarian has to choose from. though it might just be a purely dice dependent thing where someone has a few good rolls in the first couple rounds and you're dead in the water for the next 50 rounds until the game ends.


how will the altars work when you have 4 players though? you'll get +1 for every 2 at home but then you get extra because of your secondary starting position. also the advantage goes to people who start with two altars of the same type. if you remove the different bonus for alignments of foreign altars, then what's the point of alignments.


this map really needs a few play testings before any real conclusions can be made. I stand by what I said but for all we know, the way you set it up before could work quite well. I think my logic is sound though but you just don't know how games will play out.

[DiM]

i'll try to do some playtesting this weekend. hopefully i'll come up with some solutions

[max is gr8]

I think it may look better if it is, "Good" or "Evil" not "Yes No"

[Androidz]

Just a quick question as i love the idea.

Why do you use a scroll? I get its cool idea that your conquering a "map of a dungeon or something" but the legebilty goes down on it, as i would prefered a board in style of dungoens and dragons. or something.

You probbably didint get much out of this;P

[bbqpenguin]

a few things...

1.the new font is much easier to read. thank you
2. have you considered removing the 'good' and 'evil' columns as seperate entities so that you just have 1 column? hmmm i didn't explain that very well. i mean think about it like this (ignore the underline thing that was just to make it look right
____________the way you have it_________ My Idea
____________Good_________Bad ____________Alignment
warrior_______y____________n ____________Good
wizard _______ y____________n ____________Good
priest _______ y____________n ____________Good
monkey_______ n____________y ____________Evil
warlock _______n____________y ____________Evil

basically the idea here is that you really don't need to tell people that the warrior is both 'good' and 'not evil'; just 1 descriptor is needed. this would free up legend space, which i think will be very important considering how complex this could get. also, you could add a third alignment, neutral, if you were so inclines

3. this is a really cool idea. i hadn't realized the full scope of it before because i hadn't read what you had in the op about the quests and stuff. this is a very novel and interesting idea for a objective based game. a couple points:
You want each 'character' to have individual quests, which i think sounds fun. make sure the quests don't interfere with each other (or if they do, that it's balanced out) for instance, you wouldn't want the wizard and warlock both fighting for the same territory while all the other players complete their quests unhindered.
What's the winning condition? is it 'complete all your quests'? or is there a single more important quest for each player, where others are secondary? an idea i think might be fun is to have a unifying 'main quest' for all characters such as 'kill the mighty dragon and take its treasure' where the dragon is a giant pile of neutrals and the players need to try to fulfill their lesser quests in order to build up bonuses to defeat the dragon. or something like that...



sorry if that doesn't make any sense. it's very late

edited to modify my alignment idea for clarity

[MrBenn]

bbqpenguin - that's a good suggestion to have a single 'alignment' column rather than two for 'Good/Evil'.

I still haven't got my head completely around the gameplay...

Would it be worth adding some sort of secret passage/tunnel to bring two opposite corners closer together? This might help balance some of the proximity issues? Having said that, I think that it's going to be six of one and half a dozen of the other.

Can starting positions be used to help balance the distribution of good/evil starts? (I have a feeling they can't?)

I look forward to the analysis of your test games

[MrBenn]

I've had enough of you... get out of there



Welcome back to the Foundry Proper... onwards and upwards

Mr B