And Hell Followed...

This blog will contain all my thoughts and progress on my creation of an Advanced Campaign for DOOM: The Boardgame, modeled after Descent's Advanced Campaigns found in the Road To Legend and Sea Of Blood expansions.

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Gameplay on the Planetary Map

Posted by Bryce K. Nielsen

21 Aug 2011

Bryce K. Nielsen

(shnar)

United States
Elk Ridge
Utah

In Doom: And Hell Followed, the game progresses over "game weeks". In a game week, the Invader grows in power, Outposts can be corrupted by the Invader's Lieutenants, the Invader can purchase an upgrade with his earned XP (1 XP for each Frag earned), and then Marine Squad performs a squad action.

The Marine Squad Action can be moving from one Sector to another on the Planetary map and then explore the Sector if it has not been previously explored, or if the Marine Squad is at an Outpost it may travel to any other Outpost via the Outpost's Teleporter, or it may spend the "game week" Training, improving the marine's skills or restocking gear and ammo.

Here is what the Planetary Map looks like:

The map details the different installations (Mars, Io, Deimos, Titan, and Phobos), the various Outposts in the installations, the Sectors and Rifts in those locations, the Corruption Track and Facilities for when the Marines are training.

The Marine Squad and the Invader's Lieutenants move on this Planetary Map. When a Marine moves to a Sector, it can choose to explore that sector. Gameplay is then similar to the normal Doom game, a map is setup, the marines fight invaders, etc. The Invader's Lieutenants can move to an Outpost and attempt to corrupt it, one of the winning conditions of the invader. If 7 Outposts are corrupted, the game is over. And each corrupted outpost makes it a little easier to corrupt other outposts.

There are 3 types of trails on the map, Normal, Restricted and Invader Only trails. Normal trails anyone can travel on. Restricted or green trails the Marines can travel once they've purchased the Marine Upgrade Increased Security Access. The Invader's Lts can travel on Restricted trails. The Invader Only or red trails only the Invader's Lieutenants can travel on.

So, I'm relatively pleased with the way the map looks. It's not what I'd really want, but it's not terrible looking and definitely functional. I think the Encounter chances look good, though only playing will really tell. What I'm really worried about is the path. Since there are distinct "installations", breaks in the map, some of the routes are pretty simple and it almost makes the restricted routes kind of silly. It makes me wonder if there should be a reason to get the upgrade. I mean, so what if they can't go on certain routes. In RtL, there are Secret Trainers that basically required you to buy the travel upgrades. Plus there were two types of path upgrades (rivers and secret paths). So I'm wondering if there should be special missions (kinda like Rumors) that would give the marines motivation for buying the upgrade?

Anyways, I'm glad the map is good enough. I don't think I'll make any major changes, just minor tweaks. Next up, Encounters.

-shnar

13 Comments

Sun Aug 21, 2011 8:55 am

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Michael Totman

(Mkem)

Czech Republic

Very nice!

There are a few things I don't like, concretely the pictures for administration (wrong place pictured) and communications tower (marine-held shotgun and crosshair visible).
If you can still edit these, try using some command lines to disable the HUD and hand-held weapon visibility, namely g_showhud 0 and g_gunz -100 (incase you don't know, you type these into the console which can be accesed by pressing Ctrl + Alt + ~ ingame).

Looking forward to And Hell Followed...!

Posted Sun Aug 21, 2011 1:07 pm
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Guido Gloor

(haslo)

Switzerland
Ostermundigen
Bern

The statement below is false.

The statement above is correct.

That's really neat. Subscribed

Posted Sun Aug 21, 2011 2:16 pm
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Noway Jose

(Boze)

Canada

Wow this looks amazing, when were you going to have this as a file we (I) I can download and use as a campaign!?!

Posted Sun Aug 21, 2011 5:20 pm
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Bryce K. Nielsen

(shnar)

United States
Elk Ridge
Utah

Boze wrote:

Wow this looks amazing, when were you going to have this as a file we (I) I can download and use as a campaign!?!

I still have some crucial elements to finish before this is playable. Namely:
- Location Cards
- Encounter Cards
- Encounter In Hell Cards
- The Three Hunter Lieutenants
- The Outpost Levels
- At least One Invader Lair
- The Hunter and the one Invader's Lt's lairs

It's one of the points of this blog, as I post more details about the game, it's forcing me to finish bits and pieces of the game. The map, prior to this post, was a "prototype", just the Outposts and Sectors with lines between them. By forcing myself to finish this post, I've been able to flesh out the encounter chances, the rifts, the corruption details, etc.

So, my next post will detail how Encounters work, and maybe even Encounters In Hell. This will force me to finish the Location and Encounter cards. I've only done the backs for Encounter Cards and one front for a Location card, so I've got some more wokr to do

-shnar

Posted Sun Aug 21, 2011 6:51 pm
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Lukas Holik

(Luksa)

Czech Republic
Prague

Again, I can only say what an amazing job you're doing. I really look forward to the 1st version that would be finished enough for playtesting.

I'd so much love to help you with the mission cards, but I can feel that you want the creative stuff done by yourself (transfering the work into photoshop is much less fun, right) and thus there is nothing for us to do than wait.

Keep up the good job.

Posted Mon Aug 22, 2011 8:55 am
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Bryce K. Nielsen

(shnar)

United States
Elk Ridge
Utah

Luksa wrote:

I'd so much love to help you with the mission cards, but I can feel that you want the creative stuff done by yourself (transfering the work into photoshop is much less fun, right) and thus there is nothing for us to do than wait.

Oh hell no! I've had some players submit a few mission levels (about 10 so far), and I've just done some editorial tweaks. If you wanted to throw some together, the easiest for me would be to use TileSystem and just send me the *.ts file (so I can add the custom art pieces in). I need right now Location levels more than Sector levels (I have enough for a beta of those), but I'll take anything you want to piece together.

-shnar

Posted Mon Aug 22, 2011 1:55 pm
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Lukas Holik

(Luksa)

Czech Republic
Prague

Just to make sure nothing changed from the last version of the rules:

Exploring the Sector results in going through 3 Random Location cards. They tend to be medium sized.

Then we have Encounter cards, which should be smaller than Sector cards and should somewhat correspond to something that might occur to the marines while traveling between two sectors. They won't/will have goals (other than reaching the next sector/they may have a goal but some of them won't), which brings some type of promotion upon completion.

Encounter in Hell happens only while traveling using teleporters. Marines can always return to where they came from using the teleporter or go through the level to reach the second teleporter (mid-sized level) with more monsters and the goal to reach the other side (no bonus).

Then there will be Outpost missions to reclaim them from corruption - bigger, tougher and Hell missions (for the endgame).

So basically I'm kind of confused which of them you want the most and which of them you already have a plenty of.

I will start writing down ideas and making you some nice levels after that.

See ya,
Lukas

Posted Mon Aug 22, 2011 2:26 pm
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Bryce K. Nielsen

(shnar)

United States
Elk Ridge
Utah

Correct, here's a breakdown of the different "missions" the game will offer:

- Sector Levels: When the marines travel to a sector, you draw from the Sector Level deck, setup the map, and the map has it's own specific objective. Once the marines complete the objective, they can descend the elevator to the next level (repeat the process). There are 3 levels in a Sector.

- Encounters and Locations: When marines travel from on the Planetary Map, there is a chance for a "random encounter". They roll to see if they have an encounter. If they do, they draw a Location card and an Encounter card. The Location Card is a map, the Encounter card is the Invader Leader (and his minions) on that map. The Marines need to kill the Encounter's Leader to successfully complete the encounter. The Invader is trying to kill the Marines. No respawning on these encounters. The maps on the Locations are much smaller, a couple of rooms. There's always the elevator and a summoning circle.

- Encounters In Hell: Whenever the Marines travel from Outpost to Outpost using the Teleporters, there's a chance it will malfunction and send them to Hell. The marines will draw an Encounter In Hell card and these maps will be like "race" maps, the marines need to rush from one end to the other to get out. The invader is trying to kill all the marines. If even just one marine gets out the other side, then the whole squad teleports to the destination outpost, otherwise they stay at the outpost they were jaunting from. The spawning mechanism on these maps, I was thinking I would add "rifts", cracks in the walls where invaders can just pop out of.

- Outpost Maps: Whenever the Invader successfully corrupts an Outpost, the marines can enter this outpost and attempt to take it back. These maps should be more like the traditional Doom maps, where there are multiple Areas, reveal as you go, etc. Probably not as large as a typical one, but definitely not as small as the Sector Levels or Encounters. They should also have an objective that is specific to the Outpost being recovered (i.e. the Administration Building might be to kill the invaders around a bunch of computers, while the Medical Research Center could be to kill the mutated invaders).

- End Maps: Once the campaign has reached 100 Frags + Commendations, the marines go into hell to fight the invader's avatar. To do this, they travel to the invader's home location, and explore that sector. This is a custom map for that invader. The first level is for the marines to find the gateway into hell. The next level(s) are specific to every surviving Lieutenant. The last level is specific to the Avatar the Invader is playing. These maps will be larger than normal 'sector levels' with multiple areas, similar to Outpost Maps.

I have enough Sector Levels for a beta (about 15 I think on last count), but I have none of the other maps. If you wanted to piece together any of those other maps, that'd be a great weight off my shoulders. The only requirement for the Outpost and End Maps is that they be playable with the base game (i.e. no expansion board pieces). Location maps can have expansion pieces (I just mark the card with an expansion icon and if you don't have the expansion, you remove all of those cards).

-shnar

Posted Mon Aug 22, 2011 3:22 pm
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Tibs

(kungfro)

United States
Baltimore
Maryland

The background images are brilliant, but shouldn't Titan have a thick, opaque atmosphere?

Posted Mon Aug 22, 2011 4:24 pm
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Bryce K. Nielsen

(shnar)

United States
Elk Ridge
Utah

kungfro wrote:

The background images are brilliant, but shouldn't Titan have a thick, opaque atmosphere?

Probably. I just scoured the web for images that had a landscape with the appropriate planet in the horizon. Notice Io has Jupiter, Saturn is seen from Titan, Mars from the two moons, etc.

-shnar

Posted Mon Aug 22, 2011 9:11 pm
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Tristan Hall

(ninjadorg)

England
Manchester

Google 'NinjaDorg Fantasy Quest'

Shnar, I've said it before and I'll say it again: big fan of your work. cool

Posted Mon Aug 22, 2011 11:07 pm
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Bryce K. Nielsen

(shnar)

United States
Elk Ridge
Utah

Do you know what I completely forgot to put on the map? Special Abilities!

Each Outpost is supposed to have some unique ability, giving the marines yet another reason to want to keep that Outpost from being corrupted. Here's a list of what I have in my head, and will try to make room on the maps for them in text boxes:

- Mars City:
- Administration: The Prepared Marine may refill their Cancel Tokens to 3.
- Outpost Omega:
- Military Base:
- Systems Control:
- Military Complex:
- Medical Research Center:
- Communications Tower:

I really only have one idea for special abilities. If anyone has any thoughts here, I'd greatly appreciate it

Another thing about the Planetary Map not detailed in the image itself is A) what weapons are available in the specific Weapons Depot and B) what Marine Cards are available to train in. Those will be grids in the manual and when I complete the list, I'll probably just post up a separate blog for them.

-shnar