Archive for Andreas Propst
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Andreas Propst
Austria
enzenkirchen
upper austria
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Well it has been over half a year since I last posted about Dragonslayers on this here blog. Since then a lot has happened. The game was and is not dead, quite to the contrary, it evolved quite a bit since my last post, while I have kept it as a side project with other games of mine like Biomechanic Dino Battles: The Deckbuilding Game taking priority.
In this post I want to bring you up to date talking about all the cool new mechanics Rob and me (well mostly Rob and playtesters) came up with in the meantime, provide links to latest rules and cards and will share our experiences from our first playtest session a friend of mine and I had yesterday evening.
So let me start with the new rules and mechanics:
There have been basically 3 major changes to the rules since I last posted a rules update back in August last year (the cards changed a lot as well but I am not going into detail on that as you can download and have a look at the cards yourself - links to the latest rules and cards will be provided below):
1.) Monster encounters:
Instead of having Monsters of different levels in the Adventure Pile/Deck, you now have "Encounter Level X Monsters" cards and seperate, randomly shuffled Monster Piles Level 1 to 5. If you reveal a Monster Encounter card you have to fight the Monsters if the level is equal or lower than the current year. The leader however can decide to fight Monsters of a higher level earlier on if he wants to. When you encounter Monsters, reveal one Monster Card from the respective Monster Pile for every player. Starting with the player with the highest Initiative, each player picks one Monster to fight with his or her band of heroes. There is no retreat once you engage a Monster (Except through the "Teleportation" Spell).
2.) Feats and Energy:
Besides Initiative, Attack, Defense and Life Points, Rob added another stat to the heroes: Energy. Your average hero has 2 Energy which he or she can spend on one of up to 3 unique, once per year "Feats" (Special Abilities) that not only add a lot of flavor to the Heroes, but also create a lot more decisions to the gameplay as well as tremendous options and possibilites for the crafty game designer. It was fun big time to come up with unique Feats for every character. Energy full regenerates at each year end and can be replenished by using Mana Potions.
3.) Ghosts:
This is by far my favorite new mechanic, as it is an elegant way to eliminate the problem of early player elimintation. Each Hero has a Ghost-Version of him or her printed on its back side, with different stats and Feats as the live version. The ghost mechanic was an idea, and a quite ingenious at that of one of Rob's playtesters and works as follows: When your last Hero dies during the game, you do not just lose the game, but flip over your last Hero card and he or she turns into a Ghost version of himself/herself. Ghosts cannot use equipment (except for some magical ones with the "ghostly" keyword) and have different stats and Feats than their living counterparts. Many of the ghost stats improve as the years advance. So you could have a ghostly Hero who gets +2 DEF on year 3, or have attacks like 1D6 + Year for example. Ghosts can still fight Monsters and collect gold in order to enable you buy them back into the game (reviving them) at certain Buildings/Locations like the Temple. Other players can ressurrect you as well which is cheaper than when you do it yourself. However the catch with the Ghosts is this. When the epic end-battle against Grimlock the Cruel starts, all Ghosts are eliminated and players without any live Heroes lose the game immediately. Grimlock can only be fought by players with at least one living Hero.
These are the three major changes to the game rules and mechanics since I last posted. If you want to read the entire rules and are curious about the cards as well, you can download everything here:
http://ap.o-nan.org/2012/04/dragonslayers-rules-v-2-1-as-of-...
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Now to our first playtest session with new cards and rules!
So yesterday evening, my gaming buddy Berni came over to finally test the new version of Dragonslayers with me. I had worked countless hours on assembling the prototype so I hoped it would be worth the effort. So here we go:
The setup:
This is how the game looks when all is set up. Lots and lots of card piles!
The cast:
Berni, patient playtester par-excellence, who was always willing to test any games I came up with in the past and helped me playtest DS since the days long years ago when I came up with the first incarnation of the game.
Andi, game designer, artist, notorious maniac and connoiseur of fine ales (Sorry for the product placement  ) in dire need of a shave.
The enemy:
Lo and behold Grimlock the Cruel, the ultimate draconian scourge. Note the use of littel red wooden pieces to keep track of Life Points. We used blue 6 sided dice to keep track of Defense. Especially in the case of Grimlock (having a DEF of 12 in a 2 player game) that reduces the number of pieces you need tremendously.
I asked Rob beforehand how long his games have taken. He said a solo game would be over in about 45 minutes, so we aimed for an 1 hour game. However it took us a bit more than 2 hours to complete a game, and we even skipped year 4 by attacking Grimlock in year 3. Will elaborate more on that later on...
The game:
So all was set and the game could finally begin. Berni picked Thorulf Hammerfist as his starting Hero, I chose Halmond the Drunkard (chiefly because of his respectable defense value of 5 and his ability to heal Wounds) - a fitting hero for this game night with beer galore!
So we started our adventure, both bough Armor and Shields at the Woodworker to boost our Defense stats and started encountering Monsters. As we found it a bit distracting to roll dice and fight our Monsters simultaneously, we fought them one after the other. That might be one of the reasons why the game took longer than expected. What was really nice was the rule that the player who has the highest Initiative can pick the Monster which he wants to fight first. So this gives the INT considerably more value and allows for some nice drafting and screwing up the other player if you enjoy that, by picking the easiest Monster if you are weak at the moment or pick the Monster with the most promising reward etc.
Here's a shot of the game in progress:
Note that we kept track of Life Points with red wooden pieces, used little blue D6s for DEF and glass pebbles for Energy.
So after we had fought some Monsters both of us bought an additional Hero. Berni went for Chortle the Slow, who is actually a Turtle that can carry up to 3 Shields at once (don't ask me how he does it  ) and I recruited Talrog the Stout, who lacks in DEF but has a lot of Life Points which even regenerate at each year end.
To give you an impression how long the game took us: The first year (one cycle through the adventure deck) took us exaclty 50 Minutes. Granted we had to get used to the cards and everything first, but we weren't wasting a lot of time with chit-chat, were pretty fast in combat etc. Year 2 took us 45 minutes.
In general, Berni and I found ourselves attacking higher level Monsters (which we wouldn't have needed to attack)to get lots of gold and Treasures pretty early on, without any considerable losses. One time it was close though as we ran into a "Encounter Level 4 Monsters" card while the Terrain "Coast/Tidal Flats/Island" was on the table, reducing the level of each Monster Encounter by 1 while adding an additional treasure to the reward each Monster gets you. So I found myself fighting the mighty Bargost Thundertail as early as year 3. I was able to finish him off pretty fast and without many losses in Life Points due to some lucky dice rolls on my part.
So in year 3, after 2 hours of a quite epic dice-fest, erm, adventure (I am not trying to be sarcastic. I liked it a lot but the game dragged on much longer than expected, the hour was late and the beer started kicking in...) Berni, who was the current leader, decided to end the game, with whatever outcome, by engaging the big old meanie Grimlock the Cruel. However he did that in quite a smart way. He used the Spell "Form Fate" to rearrange the top 7 cards from the Adventure Deck in an order so that we would be able to visit the Hermit (we both had 600 Gold to spare and each of us bought two level III Treasures to improve our chances against the end-boss) before engaging Grimlock.
Here is what the game looked like as Berni decided to attack the all-powerful Grimlock the Cruel:
The fight agains Grimlock was pretty tense and felt well-balanced. Like we couldn't tell if the both of us would emerge as victors in the end, if Grimlock would kill off one or even the both of us. At this point Berni and I remembered we had some leftover Scrolls (actually we did not use any of them before Grimlock, as we simply forgot we had them in the fever of battle) without which our chances to win would have been drastically lower. So Berni's Chortle was taking all the hits from Grimlock, but the moment he was about to die, Berni used one of his Treasures - Elixir - to heal Chortle fully. My Talrog had less luck and eventually succumbed to Grimlock's numerous and fierce attacks on him. In the end we beat Grimlock and how it was done was very satisfying actally. My last Hero, Halmond the Drunkard, on his last Life Point, with his last bit of Energy delivered a mighty "Bodycheck" (A Feat that deals 2 damage to Halmond and 3 damage to a Monster) and knocked the oh-so powerul Grimlock out at last. The end battle felt really tense and rewarding. In hindsight both Berni and I agreed that it wasn't a bad idea at all to fight Grimlock earlier on, as the number of each of his D8 attacks increases with the years (In year 3 Grimlock performs 3 attacks in sequence to every player's weakest Hero - DEF-wise).
So to sum up I would say that the game was an epic experience, an epic adventure, but both Berni and I tend to like shorter games in the half and hour to one hour range better than long ones. And this game dragged on for too long, although the end battle paid us back for our patience. A minor complaint was also that you had to handle a ton of pieces to keep track of everything. However, the use of blue D6s for example reduced the number of pieces tremendously as mentioned before.
What was really a shame was that none of us got "ghostified", meaning we never had our last Hero die and turn into his Ghost version. Maybe we were just lucky this time. I would really have liked to see how the Ghosts would have worked out... Well maybe in our next game. I just hope there will be a next game, as Berni, as I said before, prefers shorter games. And so do my other friends. Also with Biomechanic Dino Battles: The Deckbuilding Game on the table, the chances for DS are not too good.
However I will try to convince Berni to give it another go next week at the very latest!
Well I hope you found my rules update interesting and enjoyed reading the first session report and the many pictures. And stay tuned for more - Rob and I will start to post about Dragonslayers on here on a regular basis again!
Thanks for reading!
Yours,
Andi
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Andreas Propst
Austria
enzenkirchen
upper austria
-
Due to the tireless efforts of you, my valued playtesters, I can present you now with the most up-to-date, comprehensive Dragonslayers Rules:
http://ap.o-nan.org/wp-content/uploads/Dragonslayers-Rules-9...
When reading this please keep in mind that I am no native English speaker.
Any questions, suggestions, clarifications, rewording, rephrasing and revisions would be more than welcome!
Thank you very much for everything so far!
Yours,
Andi
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Andreas Propst
Austria
enzenkirchen
upper austria
-
Fellow playtesters!
I made a printer friendly version of the new Dragonslayers cards as proposed by Robert. You can download them here:
http://ap.o-nan.org/wp-content/uploads/Dragonslayers-Playtes...
I left the stats on Heroes, Monsters and Items blank so you can add them with a pencil and make adjustments easily (speaking of balancing). You can find the current values on the excel spread sheet here:
http://ap.o-nan.org/wp-content/uploads/draft-overhaul-6-17-2...
Just so as you know: Asking you to print and cut out 15 pages of cards is a bit much to ask so you don't need to go the extra mile unless you wish to do so. You guys helped me out a lot already anyways.
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Andreas Propst
Austria
enzenkirchen
upper austria
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Here's the excel spread sheet with all the new cards as proposed by
Robert Seater
United States
Ashland
Massachusetts
Director of Game Development at Cambridge Games Factory
Feed me...games...
http://ap.o-nan.org/wp-content/uploads/draft-overhaul-6-17-2...
And here's my question:
Sadly, the old cards I sent you from TGC are already horribly outdated. So would anybody be interested in printing the new cards?
If so I will prepare pdfs with all the new cards this coming week and post them here.
Just tell me if some of you would go the extra mile and have themselves a copy of the revised game printed!
Thanks and cheers,
Andi
Sun Jun 19, 2011 11:13 pm
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Andreas Propst
Austria
enzenkirchen
upper austria
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Thanks to your tireless efforts, Dragonslayers has changed a lot and is evolving very fast. While this creative process is vital to turning DS into an exciting, satisfying and fun to play game, the original playtest copies I sent out to you are already horribly outdated.
In an effort to solve this problem, I will post here links to pdfs of blank card templates for Heroes, Monsters, Events, Terrain etc you can print to add the new cards to the game and to enable you to update it more easily. Simply add the stats and info to the cards with a pencil, so you can erase and change them easily, as the game is bound to be undergoing a lot of changes and balancing still...
Here you can download the blank card templates:
Events:
http://ap.o-nan.org/wp-content/uploads/blank-events.pdf
Heroes and Monsters:
http://ap.o-nan.org/wp-content/uploads/blank-heroes-or-monst...
Items and Treasures:
http://ap.o-nan.org/wp-content/uploads/blank-items-and-treas...
Locations:
http://ap.o-nan.org/wp-content/uploads/blank-locations.pdf
Potions and Spells:
http://ap.o-nan.org/wp-content/uploads/blank-potions-and-spe...
Terrain:
http://ap.o-nan.org/wp-content/uploads/blank-terrain.pdf
Hope these templates are helpful to some of you!
I know printing stuff yourself is much to ask, so you need only do it if you really want to. For a current list of the contents of the Adventure Pile read Rob's post here:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/2989/making-the-deck-h...
(read comments to see the newest version of the Monsters).
Another thing:
Rob and I were thinking of adding more weapons to the Blacksmith inventory. How about this weapons line-up:
Sword: +1 ATK (50 Gold)
Bow: two-handed, +3 INIT, +1 ATK, -1 DEF (50 Gold)
Battleaxe: +2 ATK (100 Gold)
Mace: +3 ATK, -2 INIT (100 Gold)
Spear: +3 ATK, +2 INIT (150 Gold)
Halberd: two-handed, +4 ATK (150 Gold)
Tell me what you think. Two handed weapons don't allow the use of a shield while equipped (or a second weapon in case of Ulg the Oak).
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Andreas Propst
Austria
enzenkirchen
upper austria
-
I definitely want to have a (female) Elf character in the game, so I came up with this:
Add a new item to the Blacksmith: Bow, cost 50 Gold: +3 INIT and -1 DEF (Two-handed: Cannot carry a shield when wielding Bow)
There are currently 16 Heroes in the game. I improved Balmir and gave Halmond and Magnifex new abilities. Check the chart I made and tell me what you think.
The hero I am least sure about is Olog, the Troll. Firstly I don't know how his enourmous amount of LPs and his ability will work out (testing needed) and secondly, trolls are ususally bad guys. But that might be interesting: Villain turned hero or something like that. 
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Andreas Propst
Austria
enzenkirchen
upper austria
-
When I try to design a game it is of utmost importance to me that it "feels" right thematically and flavor-wise.
So I am thinking of a fearless band of heroes roaming the lands on a noble quest of ridding the kingdom from all foul beasts. Personally, a fully cooperative game would be the best way to emulate that notion...
Here I want to propose a rules variant for a fully cooperative game for 2 - 4 players which I would like you to try for me.
I apologize in advance for this very crude rules change proposal. Feel free to ask right away if some questions arise. And they are bound to. I am at the moment trying to combine all the feedback I got so far while at the same time trying to keep the core game system as intact as possible...
Here's the proposed rules changes:
- Winning:
The goal of the game is to slay all Monsters within 3 years. If you have not slain all Monsters after year 3, take all remaining Monsters in the Discard Pile and fight them together.
- Increasing cost of recruiting a Hero at the Tavern:
You may recruit Heroes at the cost of 300 Gold instead of 200.
- Choosing starting Heroes and recruiting at the Tavern:
At the beginning of the game each player chooses his or her starting Hero in the following manner, starting with the youngest player and in order of age:
Shuffle the Hero Pile, draw 3 cards and choose one of them to be your starting Hero.
At the Tavern you may pay 300 Gold, shuffle the Hero Pile, draw the top 3 cards and choose one Hero from among those cards to join your party. Players may recruit Heroes one after the other in order of their age.
- Monster Fights:
Each Monster attacks multiple times, where the number of attacks equals the number of Heroes in your party. Fights would go like this (3 Heroes involved in this example):
1.) Hero A (5 INIT) attacks Monster
2.) Hero B (4 INIT) attacks Monster
3.) Monster (3 INIT) attacks Hero A
4.) Monster attacks Hero B
5.) Monster attacks Hero C
6.) Hero C (2 INIT) attacks Monster
Repeat
- Dividing the Spoils:
You have a common pool of gold and Equipment. Players decide together what to buy and may redistribute Equipment (Treasure or Items) any time except during fights.
- Where to go and what to do:
As in the original rules players either choose to visit any 1 location revealed OR fight the monster revealed. Players decide together what to do.
- Penalty for avoiding Monster fights:
If you have more than 200 Gold and do not fight a Monster on your turn, you have to pay 50 Gold.
- Treat Witch's Hut as an Event:
When you hit the Witch's Hut, treat it as an Event and take one Spell from the Witch's Hut Pile or choose one for 300 Gold as indicated on the card. Spells are also shared by all players and when they should be used is up for negotiation.
- Remove Spellbane and Transmutation from Adventure Pile and Witch's Hut Pile.
- Remove Treasure Guardian from Treasure Pile Level I
- Add a "Removed from the Game Pile" where slain Heros, used Spells and destroyed items/treasures go to:
Just a formality.
- Errata on Event "Treasure find":
You only get to pick a Level I Treasure if you have slain 3 or less Monsters.
- Cut the Change of the Year card:
Simply shuffle the Adventure Pile when it is depleted.
- Add the Event "Curse" to the Adventure-Pile.
The "Curse" will help to thin out the Deck as the game progresses. Either use the Change of the Year card as a proxy for "Curse" or print this:
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Andreas Propst
Austria
enzenkirchen
upper austria
-
There is an error in the TGC version of the rulebook:
The high score formula for solo games should be:
Remaining Gold - (Completed years needed to beat the game x 50)
(In the TGC version of the rules it says "turns" instead of years.)
A year is one complete cycle through the Adventure Pile.
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Andreas Propst
Austria
enzenkirchen
upper austria
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To make 4 Player games more viable I made two additional Hero-cards: Thorulf Hammerfist and Amros the Thief. Just grab the card images here, resize them to standard card size and print them if you wanna go for a 4 player game. Sorry for the missing artwork. Was to lazy to draw some But it'll do for playtesting:
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If you wanna come up with some additional Hero cards
of your devising feel free to do so and post their
name, stats and abilities here and I will compile the
cards
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Andreas Propst
Austria
enzenkirchen
upper austria
-
First of all I must say that I detest having to play solo. Where’s the fun, the malice, the “Schadenfreude”, the laughter when you are playing against the game without any buddies to keep you good company? But whatever, I think as the designer I owe it to the game to test it solo myself as well!
I chose Balmir the Brave as my starting hero. He’s not one of the strongest characters, but I picked him on purpose to make the game a bit more challenging. The first monster I encountered was one of the weakest in the game: The dreaded “Three-headed Cock of Terror”. Cock as in a male chicken – what else . Soon I recruited some other heroes (my group consisted of Balmir the Brave, Isengrimm the Dwarf and Ulg the Oak) and equipped them with some armor and weapons from the Blacksmith.
The monsters came along in a very favorable order, so I was able to haul in kill after kill within one year after the other. As soon as I got the treasures Dragonblood (All heroes get +4 ATK) and Dragonstone (All heroes get +2 INIT, +2 ATK and +2 DEF.) from the two legendary dragons Bargost Thundertail and Ascarius, Lord of Storms, the “End Boss” Grimlock the Cruel was a piece of cake. In the end I even had left some Large Healing Potions (replenish all Life Points of one Hero) and the Spell “Teleportation” (Allowing me to retreat any time without paying any Gold).
So I guess I could have saved some gold there. I managed to beat the game in 4 years with 1450 gold remaining. It took me about 75 minutes. Using the high score formula (Remaining Gold – (years needed to beat the game x 50)) I set a score of 1250. Try to beat that!
Overall I think I was pretty lucky with the order in which the monsters appeared and also which Treasures I ended up with. There is a huge deal of luck involved as I noted earlier, but I guess I like that. That one solo game reinforced my dislike of solo gaming, so in the future I’d better leave that to some of you who find more enjoyment in soloing.
Besides the game made me think again of changing the rules in a manner so you could visit multiple locations on your turn and still fight the monster you revealed.
Also I would suggest changing Tavern to “You may rest AND recruit Heroes”. In the current rules you can choose to either regenerate all your Heroes’ Life Points OR recruit new Heroes. That really oughta be changed. If you imagine to be in a Tavern you can have a hearty draught of beer and some sleep and still hire fellow adventurers! 
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