Dragonslayers - A game in the making!

Dragonslayers is a game about treasure, gold and glory - and of course slaying dragons. I sent out copies of the game to a crafty and trusty lot of playtesters. In this here blog my playtesters and I will discuss the game, how it plays out, what works well and what less, what is obviously broken and how we could change the rules to make Dragonslayers an enjoyable experience for gamers old and young!

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New Hero and Hero Chart

Posted by Andreas Propst

14 Jun 2011

Andreas Propst

(jilocasin)

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.

Dragonslayers

7 Comments

Tue Jun 14, 2011 5:52 pm

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Michael

(mylittlepwny)

United States

Nebraska

I haven't played with him yet, but from looking at it I would say Olog is overpowered. 9 LP is a ton! Even with his low starting DEF he is guaranteed 9 attacks in any battle.

Posted Tue Jun 14, 2011 7:55 pm
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Chewtron Volbacca

(joefain)

United States
Greensboro
North Carolina

mylittlepwny wrote:

I haven't played with him yet, but from looking at it I would say Olog is overpowered. 9 LP is a ton! Even with his low starting DEF he is guaranteed 9 attacks in any battle.

Right. What if had the usual 3 but could heal himself once per battle?

Posted Tue Jun 14, 2011 8:05 pm
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Robert Seater

(rseater)

United States
Ashland
Massachusetts

Director of Game Development at Cambridge Games Factory

Feed me...games...

I know the bow stats were my suggestion, but it's currently too weak compared to a sword. I love the concept of high INT and low DEF for ranged weapons. Here are some different abstractions that might help capture what it's like to use a bow:

Sling: 50 (bonus while closing to melee)
+3 ATK on first round of combat
(you cannot change equipment mid-fight, so you're getting no bonus thereafter)

Bow: 50 (drawing a bow exposes you)
+1 ATK
+2 INT
-1 DEF

Crossbow: 100 (needs to be loaded)
+3 ATK
-4 INT
2 handed
(oddly, spearmen strike before archers)

Ballista: 100 (lumbering but powerful)
+d6 ATK if loaded, skip attack to reload
-2 INT

Elven Longbow: 150 (requires you to protect your archers)
+3 ATK unless wounded
+6 INT

Wand of Fireball: 200 (magic users are weak in body)
+5 ATK
-1 LP

Posted Tue Jun 14, 2011 11:20 pm
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Robert Seater

(rseater)

United States
Ashland
Massachusetts

Director of Game Development at Cambridge Games Factory

Feed me...games...

mylittlepwny wrote:

I haven't played with him yet, but from looking at it I would say Olog is overpowered. 9 LP is a ton! Even with his low starting DEF he is guaranteed 9 attacks in any battle.

Yeah -- worse than that, the monster roll for tough monsters doesn't matter -- just tick off 1 LP each time. Here's an idea for the other extreme, which might be more troll-like (since DEF regenerates automatically):

Golem
1 LP
1 INT
-2 ATK
7 DEF
+1 LP if carrying a shield

alternate ability:
May carry any number of shields in addition to one weapon.

Remember, you can always buy more DEF but never more LP, so LP is much much more valuable than DEF. Someone with only 1 LP is really at the mercy of big monsters, so he needs either a way to get more LP lte game or a way to get lots of DEF.

Also, if the name is too far off thematically, how about "Golem of Justice"?

I do feel there should be room in the heroic circles for some sort of automaton or construct, but maybe this is really some sort of Lizardman.

Edited Wed Jun 15, 2011 4:13 pm
Posted Wed Jun 15, 2011 4:07 pm
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Andreas Propst

(jilocasin)

Austria
enzenkirchen
upper austria

I like the Lizardman thing! "Kazzar the Shieldbearer/Shieldmaster". How about that?

But yeah, I think we'd better scrap Olog the Troll with his 9 LP

Maybe there is room for a Troll though. Possibly one of the existing Heroes could be a Troll. Talrog the Stout for example comes to mind. We could rename it to Talrog the Troll. Has a nice ring to it! Trolls have a very hard and sturdy skin, so thematically it would be right as Talrog ignores every damage that is 2 or less. But those are just details.

Edited Wed Jun 15, 2011 5:37 pm
Posted Wed Jun 15, 2011 5:08 pm
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Robert Seater

(rseater)

United States
Ashland
Massachusetts

Director of Game Development at Cambridge Games Factory

Feed me...games...

The standard fantasy solution to having a hero that is a traditionally evil race is to have half-breeds. Nobody questions that a Half-Troll could be good, even if fantasy quasi-racism tells us that Trolls can't be.

Personally, I'm a troll/goblin/orc kind of guy, so I always enjoy playing one in a game. I used to play a Chaotic Orc when I played NetHack (the old Linux dungeon crawl which did not permit saving and was brutally hard).

Other staple races we haven't covered (but which could be injected into the art of other heroes) include: goblins, faeries, birdmen, halflings (boring), ratlings (usually evil), giants (not the really huge kind), centaur, half-spider half-elf (drider)

E.g. Someone could just have a faery sidekick in the art. The centaur might be hammerfist, since it sort of has a build in weapon by using its hooves. One of the wizards could randomly have wings.

Posted Wed Jun 15, 2011 5:39 pm
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Paul Hackman

(pomomojo)

United States
Champaign
Illinois

I like the additional heroes (though I haven't played with any yet). They seem fairly diverse though I'm all for making each one even more distinctive. I'd like playing with the shapeshifter to be a very different experience from playing with Hammerfist or whatever. While I agree that 9 lifepoints seems really overpowered, that is a very distinct attribute that would make him interesting to play with (what if you gave him 9 LP but said he could never regenerate any once lost?).

What if the thief could make some sort of roll and potentially steal a treasure when retreating (assuming the monster has a treasure)?

What if instead of a slightly more powerful attack, the Berserker attacks twice whenever his defense is at less than full strength?

What if Yin and Yang somehow attacked together once both were bought? Or if they could absorb damage for one another?

What if the Drunkard had a very high defense (he feels no pain!) but he always had to skip his first attack in order to sober up?

What about a character who is the son of a nobleman so he starts with a weapon and a lot of gold but is weak in all other areas. However, he grows stronger with each monster that is killed or he grows stronger with each year?

A character that can choose to skip his attack and instead disappear into the shadows where he cannot be hit?

I just want every character to be memorable. I also don't want any character to be mainly just a good support character.

Posted Sun Jun 19, 2011 9:23 am
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Dragonslayers - A game in the making!

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