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Robert Seater
United States
Ashland
Massachusetts
Director of Game Development at Cambridge Games Factory
Feed me...games...
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I’ve been trying to combine the various suggestions on this threat to create multiplayer DS rules. The hardest part is to get the game mechanics and difficulty to scale up smoothly as more players are added, without adding too many fiddly mechanics. E.g. I don’t want to have to change the deck composition based on the number of player, but I don’t mind small variations in setup. I’m also torn about player elimination – I really want players to worry about getting eliminated, but I don’t want people to have to sit out for a long period because of some early bad luck (especially if the game is going to last 30-45 minutes, and the early fights are going to be legitimately challenging!).
Below is my current mostly-cooperative rule suggestion:
(1) Rotate who is leader each turn, passing that role to the left. The leader decide to fight or flee (when facing a high level monster).
(2) When a monster attacks (when its initiative comes due), it rolls a separate attack against each player. If a player has several heroes, the attack goes against the lowest DEF hero, with that player breaking ties (as in the solo game). If a player has been eliminated, the extra attack is skipped -- there is always exactly 1 monster attack per player left in the game.
(3) Monsters are also harder to kill. For each player number, there is a card you use to augment all monsters. E.g. there is one for 2 player games, one for 3 player games, and so on. We can probably support as many as 8-10 players. The card is two sided -- a red side shows mostly bonus hearts (LP) and some bonus shields (DEF); a blue side shows mostly bonus shields and some bonus hearts. Each monster is either flagged as red or blue, and the corresponding side of the boost card is used. This reduces the extent to which all monsters look the same in a 8 player game.
(4) Each player receives the full gold reward of the defeated monster, but players may not share gold and equipment (except at the Trader location). If there are items as rewards, the killing blow player gets the items, and everyone else gets a gold substitute (50/100/150 for level I/II/III items).
(5) There is a partial form of player elimination. A player who loses his last hero is temporarily eliminated from the game, and he gives all of his items and gold to a single surviving player. At a tavern, you can buy a new hero for an eliminated player for only 200 (bringing them back into the game), instead of 300 to buy an extra hero for yourself. When you bring a player back into the game, they always start with their original starting character, so there is some continuity to their play experience.
(6) If the team defeats Grimlock, all surviving players win (and all dead players lose). If all players are out of the game at any one time, everyone loses.
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Director of Game Development at Cambridge Games Factory
