Archive for Chevee Dodd
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Chevee Dodd
United States
Fairmont
West Virginia
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This text copy/pasted from my website: http://www.cheveedodd.com/thoughts-deadend8.html
Sometimes I nail a design from the beginning. I have a specific idea, I work it over in my head and when it comes time to write it out, it just works. We play the game and find out that it performs exactly as I expected. That doesn't mean that it is a good game, just that what I expected seemed to be good in my head. These are rare occasions however. Most times, I design games that need additional help or are just plain terrible. Maybe I missed a mechanic or specific situation that simply breaks the game. Maybe the game is playable, but suffers form a lack of decisions or interaction. Maybe it works as designed, but that design is just not fun. This is why we playtest.
Project: Dead End has fit into both categories from the beginning. I could have called it done from the first or second playtest. It worked and was as I had imagined without anything being broken. The problem was, it was no fun. The entire inspiration for the game was to make a zombie themed game that was actually fun to play. This is why it fit into the second category. The game needed a great deal of help in order to improve its fun factor. Thankfully, my playtesters are a very vocal bunch that have no reservations about hurting my feelings. We new very quickly what was bad and what was good and they offered suggestions about what needed changing. After a few short weeks we had a game that worked well and was a bit fun, but it needed more fun. It needed more interaction and more challenges.
If you read my last post (you did, right?) you'll know that I stopped playtesting for a while. I stopped working on the game as well. Why? Because I needed to take a break from it. I had been struggling to bring new life into the game and taking a break would allow me a fresh look. This week, I decided it was time to get some playtesting done, so I started looking at new cards and mechanics. I came up with a few and introduced some new threats into the game. Some of these cards will stay, some of them won't.
That's reason #2 to playtest. Sometimes you just don't know if something will work or not. Sometimes, you have to just try and see what happens. I decided that I wanted there to be a cancel card. I wanted a way for a player to cancel things when it was not their turn. I didn't want this play to severely limit their play options when it became their turn again, so I added a draw to it as well. I thought this card would prove to bee too powerful. You could cancel ANY card in the game, AND draw 1 card! That seemed really good. I even put four in the deck. In our two playtest games, the card got played a total of zero times. That was a result I did not expect. As it turns out, the card really isn't that necessary. There aren't enough super powered cards that just need to be canceled. Does that mean the card is cut? Not yet, but I may need to make it better. Or, it may become more useful as power cards are added. Whatever happens, playtesting will tell me.
The most important reason I playtest, however, is the playtesters themselves. Everyone has a different approach to games. No matter how similar our opinions, they are not the same. Sometimes my players have wildly creative ideas that just don't work for me. Other times, however, they provide some great insight into specifics that could be modified. Personally, I like both forms of commentary. If the playtesters are telling me that something needs dramatically changed, I may not agree with their solution, but I should consider the root cause of their complaint. Maybe there's a set of cards that just don't work together the way I imagined. Maybe there's a mechanic that I am attached too that they feel is clunky or just plain bad. Whatever their feedback, I always make sure to listen. I especially listen to the negative feedback. Praise doesn't help me make my game better, it only serves to reassure me that I make awesome decisions and that hampers my ability to change those decisions later... because, in actuality, I don't always make awesome decisions.
This week, we added a new playtester to the list for Dead End. Shawn has been gaming with us for about a year now, but for some reason, he's always been absent on the nights we playtested. We coordinated our efforts this week because I really wanted his feedback. He's a great gamer that puts a lot of thought into his turns without suffering serious AP. After game one, I could tell that he was not wowed by what he had just played. Frankly, neither was I. The game ended rather awkwardly with very little actual action. I immediately suggested a second play. The second game was much more enjoyable with a great deal of back and forth play which is exactly what I wanted from the game. Shawn was still not overly impressed as he missed time and time again with his various weapons. After the game, I asked for feedback and he hesitated. I had to inform him that I wanted brutal honesty and he laid it on me: it still wasn't fun. I have to agree with him. We discussed a good deal of what he didn't enjoy and what he thought could be improved and I walked away from those tests with some great new ideas.
There's still a while to go before the game has the correct balance of tension and fun, but I think we are on the right path. I'm not going to share this versions cards this time because there was very little that changed and I'm already preparing for another session this coming Wednesday. My next report will be all about version 5 with a new set for print and play!
Sun May 20, 2012 11:05 pm
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Chevee Dodd
United States
Fairmont
West Virginia
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This text copy/pasted from my website: http://www.cheveedodd.com/thoughts-deadend7.html
It's been quite some time since I have written about the Dead End project. Work has continued, but at a much slower pace and it has not been played in several weeks. Not because it is done or that it is not a good game, but because I need to let it rest for a bit before I can start applying a critical eye to the specifics. This is the portion of the design process that I am unable to power through. I have seen people just push and push through this phase of designing until they come out with something that they are proud of, but I have never been able to do that. With every creative endeavor I have ever worked on I have come to a point where I am too attached to particular ideas and I am unable to objectively look at changes. It is at this point that I am too close to the project. I am too attached. I have always found that setting something aside for a while has allowed me to approach it with fresh eyes and renewed excitement that allows me to make drastic changes that are needed.
During this period, however, the game has not sat completely idle. I knew I needed a break, so I decided that it was time to hand the project over to my good friend DT Butchino of Sketchpad Studio. D- is filling the role of Art Director on this project and I am letting him make all of the layout and art design decisions with very few exceptions. I gave him just a few rules and then let him have the reigns:
- Single color. This allows for black, white, and one other color. The reason behind this is that the game will most likely be available for print and play long before it becomes a published product (IF it becomes a published product.) I would like for the game to be easily printable without consuming a great deal of color ink, but also the art must not suffer when printed as black and white.
- Sketchy artwork similar to the Walking Dead series. I'm not looking for polished, photo correct artwork. Simple line art with greyscale highlights make for great printable images. Also, this is a prototype, NOT a published design. D- is being paid for his services and I don't have much of a budget for artwork on a game I plan to give away or sell for no profit. Also, if I am able to license this game to a publisher, it is unlikely that the artwork would be retained.
- You pick the style. I gave no particular direction for the style of artwork used. It is completely up to him whether he wants the game to be cartoony or serious. I could honestly see it going either way, but he's the Art Director. He gets to decide.
We had a great chat about what I wanted and what I was willing to pay for it. D- and I have maintained a great friendship for over a decade and I have asked him to do work for me off and on for years. Because of this, he offers me a great discount on his work because honestly, I think he enjoys the creative process as much as I do. D- is an extremely talented dude. Not only can he do great graphic design and art, he can also add life into a project by writing card text and tying it together with the art and even help shape mechanics and card ideas. What I gave him to start with were the v4 files and these were the basic card templates that needed to be designed:
My "design" was very minimal and served only to present the cards in a consistent manner for playtesting. I'm not going to lie, I am not a fan of my layout... that's why game designers hire graphic designers. D- is the first person I turn to when something isn't visually appealing to me. He can almost without fail say, "hold on a sec," and a few minutes later show me a rough that is ten times better than any idea I had.
D- was able to take my basic design and build on it. This was his first shot at it and I don't believe either of us were wowed.
He built off of my layout initially just to get a feel for what elements needed to be on the cards. It was a necessary step because we both needed to see how the cards looked with a less basic design. We both liked the solid border and using the letter Z to indicate the zombie strength of the card instead of a plain number. We were also unsure of the vertical card name because it didn't really serve a purpose other than to be different from other games. I would say that most games have the card titles across the top for a reason and it seems silly to be different just for the sake of being different.
After a bit, D- came up with his second design and we both loved it. It presents all the key elements in a very accessible manner without getting in the way. The card titles are bold and easy to read and the game text has plenty of space without sacrificing the art space on the card. This is really about the 3rd or 4th design because he kept adjusting things between sending me updates.
So, there's no artwork yet. We are way too early in the process to start contemplating art. This is still the design and refine stage. Cards are changing, being removed, and added. Titles may change, effects may change, and all of that changes what will be required of the art. Art is the last thing to worry about at this point. I may find some filler for personal playtest copies, but as that would surely violate copyright, I will not be posting images of that here.
Okay, that's a lie. There is a bit of artwork done. Here's some more layouts from D- and completed house cards!
I do have some new cards designed but I haven't committed them to the deck yet. Now that I have the layout stuff in order, I'm going to order some print on demand poker decks with excess cards and blanks so that I can fiddle with the numbers and even the text. The design is getting a bit to detailed to keep adding bits of sleeved paper here and there. Having cards that are easily shuffled and also easily written on is invaluable at this stage.
I miss designing on business cards.
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Chevee Dodd
United States
Fairmont
West Virginia
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This text copy/pasted from my website: http://www.cheveedodd.com/thoughts.html
The time has finally arrived for me to share this game with you. After my last posting, the game has gone through a few revisions. I meant to post something after the first revision, but I really didn't want to keep writing more and more about the various little changes I was making. The difference between version 3 and version 3.2 were very slight with almost no play changes taking place, and only a few minor wording changes on cards. The game was still very fun, but needed to be even leaner and more tense. So, I skipped posting about 3.2 and here we have arrived at 4.0!
This being officially the fourth iteration of the game, there have been some small changes that add up to be dramatic game play differences. For one, I cut Noisy Neighbor altogether. I heard too many times that players didn't like the card but felt that there needed to be a tense moment when they fire a gun... because that's what happens in the movies. Everyone knows that loud noises attract zombies. So, one of the playtesters offered up a simple solution: put the drawback on the guns themselves. Brilliant!
That simple change offered up a few more streamlining options and let me work on the Event cards a bit. Beyond the way guns work, and some numbers changing, the game has remained fairly stable from version three until now. I'm very satisfied with the underlying system, now it's just a matter of tuning everything up and playing with new cards and abilities.
So, I present you with version 4:
Removal has gotten a bit more potent, so the zombies were adjusted slightly to compensate. I want the players to be forced to deal with zombies and as the game currently sits, it's entirely possible that players turtle up and never play zombies on each other prolonging the game for a very long time. Maybe even indefinitely. So, the zombie cards have got nastier and nastier. The players are constantly facing the impending doom of a zombie apocalypse.
Now, as I promised, I'm including a playtest version of the game with this post. Obviously this is Print and Play, so anyone that wants to give it a shot is welcome to try it out. All you'll need is a few sheets of paper or card stock to print the cards on, counters to represent zombies, and a few distinguishable counters to represent Wandering Zombies.
All I ask for anyone that is interested in playtesting is please tell me how it goes! I'm not great at writing rules. I always feel like I am either over explaining or not explaining enough. I feel it is the weakest part of my designs. Even though Scallywags did not change much from the initial playtest, the rules went through near ten revisions before I was happy. Keep that in mind when reading this set! This is the very first draft and will likely need a significant number of changes before they can teach the game properly. If you have questions before, during, or after a test, the fastest way to reach me is email or Twitter. If that doesn't work for you, feel free to post a question to here.
Currently we are just testing the balance of the cards. I don't have any major revisions in mind. I would like to test the game with more than 5 and it may be necessary to modify the base defense of the house based on the number of players. I would like for the last living player to have a chance at survival and if there are 3 to 6 players ganging up, that seems unlikely. I would also like to hear any ideas that you may have for new cards or different effects. I want to keep the game fairly light, but I'm always open to suggestions.
Get the files here: Dead End Print and Play Files
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Chevee Dodd
United States
Fairmont
West Virginia
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This text copy/pasted from my website: http://www.cheveedodd.com/thoughts.html
If you've been following along, I teased in my last post that I was excited about the new direction of the game. My first playtest was successful, but it was obvious that I needed to spend some serious time tuning things and and livening it up a bit. I went back, tweaked a bit here and there and what came out as version 2 was garbage. The game broke. It was no fun, not engaging at all and could very easily go on forever unless the players made a conscious decision to not survive. What was worse, adding up all the players scores every turn was really annoying. I had successfully stripped all the fun out of the design. So, I let things sit for a while and didn't think about it. Every now and again I had a little idea, but nothing great. On my way home from work one day, it really hit me: take the zombies off of the cards.
It was a great moment. I realized that if I didn't want players adding up large point totals each turn, I needed to add a tactile element. I needed little zombies. I needed to be able to shuffle tokens around and they all needed to be worth the same amount. Now, instead of playing a strength 3 zombie card on a player, you would instead give that player 3 zombie tokens from a central pool. This simple little change makes all the difference. Suddenly it came back to life and was much stronger than version 2. I'll skip right ahead and show you the cards:
Alright, first thing is first, new mechanics. One thing that bothered me about the initial design was Barricades and Noisy Neighbor. Barricades were practically useless because it only took one Strong Zombie to knock them down. If you were over-crowded with zombies already, this could be a killing blow. I want barricades, and I want zombies to break them down... I think it is very thematic... but I didn't want to nullify the usefulness of the Barricades, or else they may just get played as zombies all the time. Also, with Noisy Neighbor, Pistol was an almost useless card. You could kill a zombie, sure, but a small one and chances are, if someone is holding the Noisy Neighbor, you get a 5 or 7 strength zombie in return. Now that all zombies are of equal strength, it is not such a broken card, but I still felt like it was too consistent. My fix for all of this (and more) was to add a randomizer. I had always intended to have a zombie icon on the cards that can be played by dead players, so I decided that this would be the perfect randomizer. When playing a card that has a random element, you flip the top card of the deck. If there is a zombie icon on the card, you fail. This means Strong Zombie is not a guarantee and neither is getting to move off a zombie with Noisy Neighbor. So, when you see FLIP:# on a card, that means that you flip that many from the top of the deck and then consult the card for what happens on a success or failure.
I also added the idea that guns stay in play in front of you and are loaded with a certain number of shots. Now, when playing a Pistol or Shotgun, you keep it face up in front of you and add the appropriate number of counters equal to the number of shots the gun has. When you fire the gun, you remove one of these counters and flip the top card of the deck. On a success, you kill 1 zombie. I did not decide at this point how the multiple shots on Shotgun would work, so I decided that we'd figure that out in playtesting. When the gun has no shots remaining, it is discarded.
Event cards are a bit of a change from the previous version. There are now 2, Here They Come and What Was That. Both of these cards are played immediately when drawn and the player draws an additional card for their hand. These cards are never taken into hand so they cannot be played as a zombie card.
The last big change is the strength of the player's houses and the zombie value on the cards. With the previous version set at a defense of 25, there was way too much counting and adding in the game. Now that all zombies are 1 strength, I decided that a good number for the defense was 10. I adjusted the zombie values accordingly. Also, now that we are dealing with a pool of zombies, it is no longer required that you assign all of the zombies to a single player when playing a zombie card of strength 2 or higher. These values are no longer strength, but are number instead. If you play a zombie card with 2 or 3 on it, you can assign that many zombies from the middle to any number of players. I found that this greatly eased tensions between players because more often than not we would split up the zombies to keep things even.
After I laid out all the cards I wanted to make, I started thinking about how many of each card I wanted in the deck (again) as well as how I wanted to distribute the zombie icons. I had a bit of a slow day at work and as you can see I spent some time doing math figuring all this out. In the end, I decided to weight the deck in favor of successes when flipping. I came out with a roughly 60-40 split which would drop closer to 50-50 as players keep guns and Barricades in front of them and the deck reshuffles.
Now, this is where my previous efforts to make neat and orderly playtest cards fails. I have completely changed the way cards work. So the design is all wrong. I need to adjust the old card template to put the new information where I need it. Had I just stuck with hand-written cards like a normal person, I wouldn't have had to spend more time at work figuring out how to do the layout. In the end, I didn't even really change much. I re-hashed the old template to save some time. It'll get fixed some day after the design stabilizes more, but there's lots more playtesting to go.
Read more »
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Chevee Dodd
United States
Fairmont
West Virginia
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This text copy/pasted from my website: http://www.cheveedodd.com/thoughts.html
After the second playtest session I Tweeted that I broke the game. Well, I did. In an effort to make the game a bit longer, and somewhat deeper, I ended up also making it exuberantly dull. It was a very frustrating session that left me stumped. The previous session had ended with a game that was playable, yet too chaotic and short but that brought a bit of charm with it. I wanted to dress things up a bit and calm the game down, so I tightened up the deck, increased the house values, and toned down the zombies a bit. I thought that this would bring a bit more strategy into the game while simultaneously opening up more tactical decisions. What actually happened was something completely different.
The first session went much like I had expected. I very rarely test games solo before showing them to my friends, preferring instead to just go with it and see what happens. I have found over the years that my friends are very good at finding flaws and while I may be good at it, I'm not perfect. I honestly don't believe anyone is when they are working on something of their own. It becomes too personal and can be very difficult to judge objectively. So, my method is to bring a fresh idea to the table and try it. Instead of just my opinion shaping the game from the early stages, I have four or five unique opinions that can bring out some really fun ideas. With all that said, the resounding feedback from that first session was that it was too short. There were some overpowered cards and the players just didn't have enough defense to survive. The good news meant that the system was not broken, it just needed to be tweaked.
So instead, I broke the system.
This wasn't intentional. Honest. I fully thought that what I had was a solid plan, but that it just needed tuned. I added a full 10 points to the defense of the player's houses and chopped the zombie's strengths down. I reduced the number of power cards and added plain zombie cards to the deck to make things more structured and less chaotic. That all sounds great on paper and makes logical sense. What all this actually did was make the game really annoying. Reduced defense and increased zombie strength meant that the deck needed to be nearly played out as zombies in order to kill someone. Reducing the action cards meant that players were using those more as removal and less as zombies which ultimately resulted in what may have been a complete stalemate. But, the most annoying feature was counting. Now players could have 10 or more zombies on their house which meant that on your turn you had to add all that Strength up just to see who was winning and losing. Counting up those totals is the opposite of fun.
My goal in starting this project was to have a zombie themed game that was actually fun to play. My definition of fun is something that is simple enough to teach in minutes, is highly interactive, is completed in a short time, and doesn't require so much thinking that it impairs the social aspect of getting together with friends. There are a few zombie games out there that fit this criteria, but the ones that I have played are devoid of the zombie theme. Yes, they feature zombies and maybe even some guns and chainsaws, but they don't have any actual survival horror mechanics. They are essentially just taking other games and pasting the zombie theme on top. I wanted something that was not only fun with zombies, but also captured the genre of survival horror with zombies breaking down doors, running towards noisy gunshots, and players dying and turning into zombies. What came out of the second playtest session was neither of these things. It felt like a cheap math-based game with zombies slapped on it, took way to long, and was annoyingly fiddly.
Where do I go from here? Well, I was going to write about this immediately following the session, but honestly, I had no enthusiasm. I didn't want to see this blog die at the hands of another unsuccessful design. I had no positive note to end on, so I put off writing. I put of working on the game also. In my creative endeavors over the years, I have had some of my most productive moments after putting something in the back of my mind for a few hours or days. I have come to rely on my minds ability to just figure stuff out without me thinking about it. I had a long weekend, I played video games. I let things just work themselves out. And they did. I didn't want to keep tweaking this system, I wanted to refine it, strip out the garbage, and end up with a leaner product that offered more actual decisions while feeling less mathy. While driving home one evening, I had the epiphany that may change this design into just that. It's yet to be tested, and is not even remotely proven, but I am excited for this game again and that's really what it takes to keep me involved in this process.
So, my next post will be all about the new iteration of the game. As soon as I have a prototype together , I'll get some pictures and write it up. If you've been following along, or even if you're new, it would be awesome if you'd sign up for my newsletter and/or follow me on Twitter. Discussion fuels my motivation.
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Chevee Dodd
United States
Fairmont
West Virginia
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This text copy/pasted from my website: http://www.cheveedodd.com/thoughts.html
I left off last post a bit hastily. I had wanted to talk about the second iteration of the game but I didn't get it done on time. Have I mentioned that I'm a horrible procrastinator? Yeah. Well, to make things worse, my play group canceled this week. That let me work on things a bit more in my head before sitting down to put it on paper. My wife had something to do with my daughters, so I suddenly found myself with a few free hours to put in some time.
This is where I start really looking at details. I laid the existing cards out and started to think about what changes, if any, each card needed to round out the balance issues. I knew that the deck needed some serious tweaking, so my main focus was to reduce the quantity of some cards. "Shh..." is a particularly powerful card that needed to be reduced. It allows a player to reduce the level of threat on his house while simultaneously increasing the threat on another players house. If it is a 5 point Zombie, that's a 10 point swing! That is a much more powerful ability than say "Shotgun" which allows you to kill one Zombie on your own house, and may come with a penalty if an opponent is holding a "Noisey Neighbor."
With all that in mind, the first thing I did was increase the base defense of the player's houses to 25. The first time we played, the game was extremely short. I don't want the game to stretch on and on, but we had effectively eliminated the last player before he even took his turn. I don't mind wild swings like this, but my ultimate goal is making the game FUN. For me, a simple game that goes on and on is not fun but losing before you even get to take a turn just sucks! I'm not sure this number will stick either. It may be a variable based on the number of players after more playtesting, but I plan to cover the theory of that in my next post. In the spirit of full disclosure, the zombie artwork used on the player tile is not mine. I lifted that from a Google image search.
Now that I've looked at the major changes needed my method gets a little more scientific. I still have the cards laid in front of me to trim the count of individual cards, but on paper, I have to start thinking about the math involved. In this particular game, I have to make sure that there is enough Zombie strength to actually have an end game. Because zombies stay in play unless killed, the deck thins quickly. In a 4 player game, it would take at the very least a combined strength of 75 to kill three players and end with an ultimate winner. That number is a bit misleading though because as players die, they can shift the zombies assigned to them around meaning that I don't need to have that full number represented by the deck. I also don't want the deck to be over-saturated with powerful Zombie cards. One of the key play choices in the game is deciding to play cards offensively or defensively. If there are too many zombies in the deck, this decision becomes less important.
So, I didn't take notes on this process, but this is what I ended up with:
# Str Name Text
6 1 Pistol Kill one Zombie with Strength 3 or less.
4 3 Shotgun Kill one Zombie.
3 4 Shhh... Move one Zombie from your house to another player's house.
4 5 Axe Kill one Zombie.
6 2 Barricade +4 Defense.
4 4 Noisey Neighbor After an opponent plays a GUN you may move one Zombie
from your house tho their's.
2 n/a Here they come! Flip the top 4 cards of the deck. Distribute all cards
as Zombies to your opponents. Each opponent may only receive
one Zombie in this manner.
4 3 Fast Zombie Fast Zombie cannot be killed with an axe.
3 3 Strong Zombie When you play Strong Zombie, you may destroy one
barricade on that player's house.
2 2 Wandering Zombie At the end of your turn, move Wandering Zombie
to a player on your left or right.
2 2 Double Zombie When you play Double Zombie, flip the top card of the
deck. If it is a Zombie card, attach it to this one. Treat
them as a single Zombie with a combined strength value.
10 2 Zombie
4 4 Zombie
After I got this all worked out, I wrote out the changes on the backs of new business cards. As it turns out, this was wasted effort. My play group didn't meet to try this version, and when I have too much time on my hands I tend to take things a little too far. For a second test set, I shouldn't be putting any time into card design because so many of my designs fail after a few playtests when it is revealed that the game has an inherent flaw. I'm determined with this project though, because of this blog, so hopefully it will not be a wasted effort. So, with time on my hands, I have a hard time resisting. I fire up my favorite editing/drawing sofware, Inkscape and make up some cards.
The design is not particularly elegant. It is still a playtest set, but I'd like for my playtesters to be able to actually read the cards and not have to ask a hundred questions. I had a brainstorm on the layout of the double-purpose cards, but after printing them and sleeving everything, I'm not sold that it is a good design. If there was art in place, orientation may be more obvious, but we'll see after tonights test. I plan on focusing my next post more on game theory, but I may do a test report in between.
Thanks for reading!
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Chevee Dodd
United States
Fairmont
West Virginia
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This text copy/pasted from my website: http://www.cheveedodd.com/thoughts.html
In my last post I discussed how the design for "Dead End" came about. This time I'd like to talk about specifics. When I was working on ideas, I had a few vague plans for rules, and some card ideas, but I hadn't finalized anything. When I sat down to write out the cards, I had to at least consider limits so that I could stay within boundaries.
What I had at this point:
- Hand Size: 3 to 5
- Play 2 cards per turn.
- Draw up to maximum hand size at start of turn
- At the end of the active player's turn, if the total strength of zombies at their house is greater than the current defense, that player dies and becomes undead.
- Undead players cannot be the target of zombie cards and cannot play cards such as guns, barricades, or axe.
- In addition to playing cards during their turn, undead players may move one zombie off of their house to a living player's house.
With these basic ideas in place, it became time to actually start working on cards. I knew I wanted weapons because... well, this is a zombie game. It just wouldn't be the same without weapons. I wanted the players to be able to boost the defense of their house with boards and nails or heavy furniture. I really wanted players to be able to move zombies off of their house. I struggled for a bit figuring out various ideas for this. The main idea was ripped straight from Walking Dead where the characters are all quiet and don't move and the zombies walk on by. I also wanted to add a bit of uncertainty to using guns. They universally seem to attract zombies in the movies, so why not make that a setback of playing them?
Also, I didn't want there to be useless cards. If a player dies or doesn't have zombies on their house, what would they do with all those action cards? I decided that all cards would also serve as basic zombies. This led to some problems when writing out the cards because I didn't spend any time working on the correct ratio of cards and zombie strength, but I figured that would be corrected through playtesting. So, the cards:
# Str Name Text
8 1 Pistol Kill one zombie Strength 3 or less.
6 2 Shotgun Kill one zombie.
7 5 Shhh... Move one zombie to any opponent.
4 7 Axe Kill one zombie.
6 2 Barricade +2 Defense.
5 3 Noisey Neighbor Play after an opponent uses a gun. Move one
zombie to that opponent.
4 Here they come! Reveal the top 4 cards of the draw pile. Play
one zombie from the revealed cards on each opponent.
5 3 Fast Zombie Cannot be killed with an axe.
3 3 Strong Zombie When played, destroy one barricade on the
opposing house.
2 2 Wandering Zombie At the end of your turn, move the Wandering
Zombie to the player on your left.
As you can see the power level of the deck was not really taken into consideration. I really wanted to just see how these cards work together, so I went really heavy on action cards. Also, I started the houses at a defense of 15 which is either too low or the zombies are too strong. The second version of the deck will have less action cards, more zombies, and the strength of zombies will be adjusted. I have a few ideas for some new types of specialty zombie, but there may also be some that are just plain old zombies.
The main thing that needs work is the total distribution. This is also one of the parts I enjoy the most. Whenever I design a new card game, I like to lay things out and look them over. I used to play a large number of CCGs and tuning my games cards feels a lot like building a deck in those games. I like looking at the total power of the deck versus the expected defenses of the houses. I enjoy figuring out the correct mix of offensive versus defensive cards to achieve a balance, but which slightly favors the game ending. Otherwise, it would be very easy to make defensive cards completely useless or make it so that the game never ends because players can easily survive each turn.
I know I promised to talk about the second playtest version in this post, but to be honest, I haven't worked on it yet. I have ideas in my head that I've been stewing over for the week, so I'll put it together before the playtest session............. tomorrow!?
Gotta go. More to come!
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Chevee Dodd
United States
Fairmont
West Virginia
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This text copy/pasted from my website: http://www.cheveedodd.com/thoughts.html
When I started this site, my intention was to share the design process with anyone that wanted to follow. I am marveled by the transparency of some game designers of both video and board games. Their ability to connect with people and allow the community as a whole to engage in design decisions fascinates me. This will be my first attempt at "open game design."
My regular game group meets on Wednesday evenings. We used to playtest designs regularly, but I found my creativity sapped these past few years due to starting college, and changing careers. Well, I've graduated, and work is great so suddenly my desire to create has returned. This past Wednesday (Feb 1, 2012) I brought out the first new prototype that we've tried in a while. The codename for this new project is "Dead End." It is a zombie themed card game that is intended to be quick, light, and fun.
This is how my projects begin. A few scratch notes on a yellow notepad sets the ball in motion. I have tried maintaining notebooks. I have tried taking notes electronically. I have tried to maintain a "file." Nothing has worked for me creatively like a plain yellow notepad. When I start a design, I generally just have a few ideas. For this one, I wanted it to be about zombies and I wanted there to be a possibility that everyone loses. Developing on that idea, I have placed the players in their homes around a cul-de-sac when the approaching doom begins. The players have fortified their homes and must attempt to be the last survivor.
That's about it for my first note taking session. I had a ton of ideas for various things, but at this point, I just let things stew around in my head for a while. I find that I solve problems better when I am not actively thinking about them, so I let everything just work itself out in thoughts. This process might not be efficient, and I very well might let great ideas go while cultivating bad ones, but it's my process and it works for me. Over the next few weeks I developed various ideas. I wanted players to play zombies on their opponents while also being able to kill zombies that have been played on them. I also wanted players to "die" but I hate player elimination. So, why not let players that "die" become zombie players that attempt to kill off the survivors? I like that! So, I've introduced the idea that the players can all lose and the zombies can win, but don't be fooled, this is no co-op.
After I think I have something in my head that I want to try, I start putting it in writing. I'm not talking about writing out a set of detailed rules, I'm just trying to facilitate the design process with committed ideas. This is when I work on things like card types, powers, hand size, play limits... all the "nuts and bolts" of the design. Initially I had imagined that there would be zombie cards and action cards. Players would play zombies on their opponents and actions would either help them or further hinder their opponents. I realized when writing things out though that if a player got turned into a zombie, all those action cards would be useless to them. I don't like having useless things. Why not have the cards do both? The action cards could also be zombie cards. This gives the player a decision to either play the card to help themselves or to further hinder their opponent. I like this!
This is where my prototypes start. I have had various jobs in the past that have provided me with an abundance of business cards. These things make great cards for game design! I can write on them, scribble on them, draw on them and I always have plenty of extras for adding new cards or changing the design. I didn't sit down and write these out until an hour or so before game time. I wanted to test out the various event cards so I went a little overboard with the total number of each card. I also wanted to have cards that were just zombies. This adds a bit of hand management into the game because it opens up the action cards a little instead of constantly playing them as zombies. While writing all these cards, my friend John says, "why don't you have zombies that do things?" I had cultivated this idea once, but it struck me as brilliant in that moment. Sure. Let's try that! So now we have zombies that break down barricades and zombies that can't be killed with an axe.
I have a deep feeling that this first prototype is wildly broken and I am absolutely correct. Our first playtest session didn't reveal any inherent mechanics that are flawed, just the power level of the cards compared to the defensibility of the houses. This is when the "fun" starts. The game is not broken beyond repair, it just needs tuned. The number of action cards needs turned down. The strength of zombies needs adjusted. The base defense of the house needs tweaked. A few things need removed. A few things need added. Some rules need adjusting. That's all. Not a bad start really.
I hope this wasn't too vague and boring for those of you that made it all the way through. My next post will involve a detailed description of the first iteration as well as a full description of the second version. My plans are to make this game as "open source" as possible, allowing anyone that wants to try it at any stage of the process to make their own version and give it a go. Stay tuned!
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