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D Conklin
United States
North Carolina
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Still around...just selling a house and moving across country in "real life", so gaming time has been sparse.
I did make a decision to turn what was described as "Power Rolls" in a previous post into something called "Boosts".
Essentially, when a player rolls the 2x2 side of the dice, something really good happens...kind of like a power up in video gaming.
This seems counter-intuitive to me as my original thoughts of the battle were of the warriors "winding down" as they battled each other to exhaustion.
By turning it on its head, I think the game will become more tense and fun as the stakes increase...with a BIG action of some sort ultimately finishing it off.
I think this will really spice things up in the game...of course, at the cost of introducing more randomness.
More soon...
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D Conklin
United States
North Carolina
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Rule book is still under rewrite...but making good progress.
One of the creative twists that I think will kick the game up a notch is a customizable board.
To provide for this, the game board is growing in size. From a single 16 x 16 base covered in 16 4x4 plates, it is changing to allow each player to bring their own 16x16 base with only 14 4x4's because the 4x4's will be slightly off. This will allow a "center" row of 4x4's as well as a "ledge" for attaching their warrior in a starting position....
A couple pictures are worth a 1000 words here.
Here's what the players bring to the table...
And the Arena is assembled from there...
Eventually, there may be some game-effects from color-coded plates....more thought needed there.
Also, I'm toying with the idea of each player potentially bringing some "obstacles" to liven things up:
Some of these ideas may not make it into the basic game, but will be added as "Change" items.
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D Conklin
United States
North Carolina
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While the heart of the Build system in BattleBrik is total customization of warriors, I do like the idea of providing pre-built warriors as part of the base set and/or warrior packs.
I've been thinking of how to display the stats cleanly and have a few ideas....however, I just found the following on the new LEGO Marvel website ( http://marvelsuperheroes.lego.com/en-us/default.aspx)
One of my design goals is to make elements of BattleBrik look as "official" as possible, so I think I could leverage the Marvel stats "cards" for my own purposes...here's a quick take:
I have to wonder though...why would LEGO publish these stats for Marvel minifigs unless they were going to do something with them?
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D Conklin
United States
North Carolina
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Still working on ideas:
Turn Order
I have two competing approaches to turn order I'm mulling over...
In the first, I try to modify/fix the current "Roll for Edge" where players roll the highest number of yellow tiles on their Skill dice to get a grey "Edge tile" that gives them a bonus going into the simultaneous Action phase.
In the other, I introduce a new order system. Players roll their Skill dice and the player with the most yellow tiles (ie Planning) gets to choose an order number (presumably 1) followed by the other player choosing an order number. (using the variable dice faces for LEGO dice) Players continue until 4 order numbers are taken. This is done to decrease the repetitiveness for 2 players and to cleanly extending to up to four players total.
During a round, the player with the lowest order number can choose to take an action or "wait". The choice then moves to the next order number and so on until someone takes a turn, or the choice reaches the highest order number who MUST take a turn, turning over his order number when done. It then repeats, starting back at the lowest order number and continues this way until all order numbers have been turned over.
The seems really promising as it solves the problems introduced with simultaneous resolution without resorting to boring old IGOUGO. It also introduces some interesting decision points around acting vs. waiting to see what your opponent will do.
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D Conklin
United States
North Carolina
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In the post to Cuusoo I found myself writing the following description of game play:
Quote:
Game play is fast and furious, with both tactical and strategic decisions. It can be played by all ages and experience levels since it can be described as "Easy to Learn, but Hard to Master".
Ok... looks like I have some work to do. Here are some thoughts on various options I am working through for game play:
Phases
Instead of simultaneous actions where players play the Action tile in the color of the action they want to perform, there are distinct Action phases for Initiative, Movement, and Attacks. Players would roll in Initiative phase to determine order, then apply that order (or reverse order as the case may be) in Movement and Attack phases.
Action Points
Right now, 4 experience (grey = wildcard) tiles are on the skill dice. These will be moved off the dice to 4 2x2 tiles used as "action points" during the game phases. Instead of having solid color Action tiles, players would use the Experience tiles to improve their rolls during each phase. Resource management! Do you spend your points up front or save them for the big attack?
Power Rolls
The 4 spots vacated by the experience tiles on the Skill dice get consolidated to one side of the dice (Gear dice gets a consolidated blank side too) so that on each dice one whole side gets a single 2x2 tile that represents a "Power roll" (needs a better name).
Essentially like a critical success...this triggers a bonus or special effect. Thinking that a Silver tile (Silver = Skill) and a Gold tile (Gold = Gear) would be cool...but I'm not sure if they even make silver and gold tiles?
Customizable Arena
I'm thinking I need to go back to the "spatial" arena design where the more traditional approach is used rather than the abstract concept (see Board & Movement). This will set things up for a whole "customizable area" aspect to the game...something I think will compliment creativity.
Hit Location
In the previous iteration of the rules, there was no real incentive to attack anywhere other than the torso of your opponent's warrior. With new emphasis on initiative and movement, this should change. There has to be a reason to buy armor for the head and legs...and a reason to aim for them...perhaps damage is doubled when applied to non-torso body parts?
Knock-back
Some TBD criteria should cause damage to result in knock-back of warriors...to encourage movement once engaged in combat.
Hopefully some play testing soon...
Mon Mar 19, 2012 10:50 pm
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D Conklin
United States
North Carolina
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Just for the fun of it, I put BattleBrik on CUUSOO ( http://lego.cuusoo.com/ideas/view/12299):
A little premature I'll admit, but I couldn't resist the opportunity to get in on this cool new LEGO social experience. Anybody want to be the first supporter? 
Perhaps this will motivate me to improve the rules!
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D Conklin
United States
North Carolina
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While I continue to struggle with getting the rules right, there are a few other aspects I am wrestling with as well...
Dice Identification
In a comment for the Dice Redux post, reluctantpirate suggested a tweak to the dice:
reluctantpirate wrote: This might create more problems than it solves, but could you get 6 2x2 plates to place underneath the smooth plates of one die? As long as you have one on each face the balance of the die should remain the same. This way you could identify them just by touch (one die would slightly larger and heavier). You could also do this to both dice using different colors, but it would probably be easier to just do it for one. Anyway, this may end up looking terribly ugly, but who knows. At least you wouldn't have to re-balance any of the systems you have created or buy super-rare gold dice.
I gave it a try and although it looks fine, experimentation showed that the raised surfaces prevented the dice from bouncing and the dice would sometimes get stuck in-between two faces. Sadly, this will not work.
Cards
I've begun making a list of potential cards. Even though the final text and card effects will depend entirely on the final state of the rules, I can at least outline the basic gist of the cards. My current thinking is there will be a "base set" of cards, and then potentially future cards that are "minifigure specific". More thought is needed, but here is the start of the list:
charge - Declare an attack, but allowed to move first
beserker rage - reroll attack/damage up to x times
quick - extra move during a move
parry - use weapon as defense
shield bash - attack with shield
battle cry - auto win initiative
roar of the crowd - steal initiative
dirty tactics - steal initiative
tough - heal a torso tile
feint - declare attack, but then perform differnt Action with some bonus
grapple - when in same space, cancel opponents Action
dodge - auto defense
stance - improve defense
taunt - force opponent to take certain action
push - attack, then move opponent
"Squads"
One thing I noticed during play-testing is that the single-fig vs single-fig nature of the game so far has some necessary limitations. I'm wondering if changing the game to require/allow two figs per side and/or squads of figs would help spice things up.
This is a slippery slope, as I don't want this game to encroach into BrikWars territory... Also, while it would add new cool dimensions to the game (ie meta-gaming), it would also exacerbate some already identified issues...specifically dice management. More to consider here....
Multi-player
I've always thought of this game only in terms of being 2-player. But, I find that a lot of fun is added when you add more players. Had a great game of Wiz-War (eighth edition) the other night with my gaming group that really drove home the point. I need to consider how to expand the game to more players. Right now the board is a limiting factor.
Overall, the message is that there is a lot more design work needed to make this game viable. I think I'm starting to see why LEGO put out "simplistic" games...
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D Conklin
United States
North Carolina
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The first draft of the rules are done...but sadly, they don't play well.
Again we see the glaring gap between game theory and game fun...
I think the root of the problem is the simultaneous resolution of Actions. The "phasing" that is required to allow both players to resolve their action is leading to too much book-keeping and forgetting to "clean up" some things.
I'll experiment with going back to more of a IGOUGO approach, but with the twist of Edge & Advantage.
This is the first real speed bump I've hit in the development of the game, so I'm taking it kind of hard.
Seeing my 13 yr old obviously less than impressed with my much ballyhooed "first draft of the rules" was a crushing blow.
However, I feel confident that some re-working might yet make this a fun game to play...
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D Conklin
United States
North Carolina
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Good news:
The first draft of the build instructions for BattleBrik are complete!
There are graphics issues, formatting issues, content issues.... LOTS of issues. To be sure, there will be many changes as things are tested and tweaked...BUT this is a pretty major milestone in the life of this project!
First draft of the rules will not be far behind...and then the fun of play-testing and tweaking the heck out of this thing will begin.
Sharing the file here for now:
http://www.filedropper.com/battlebrkbuildinstructionsdraft
Rules soon!
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D Conklin
United States
North Carolina
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Writing rules is as much about book-keeping as it is creative design!
Changing some wording to be consistent and clear...
Tagline is now:
"Choose your gear. Balance your skills. Hone your strategy."
"Stat dice" is now "Skill dice"
"Battle" when referring to cards or decks is now "Strategy"
References to "Gladiator" are changed to "Warrior"
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