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John Paul Messerly
United States
Sherman Oaks
California
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I finished the third chapter of my "High School of the Dead" Zed Deck mod this weekend. I'm happy with it so far though its quite a challenge to survive all 3 chapters. The play testing took a little longer than expected because I spent too much time balancing it on its own and once I played it in combination with the other chapters I found it was too difficult.
This chapter tells the story of the survivors finally reaching their first objective... the Safe House. In this level the survivors finally get access to military grade weapons and vehicles.
Chapter 3:
http://mermuse.jmwebdesigns.com/post/chapter3_sm.jpg
http://mermuse.jmwebdesigns.com/post/chapter3b_sm.jpg
I'm undecided on whether or not to continue the story into the following chapters. The next section of the story becomes much more political so I would need to come up with creative ways to represent these struggles. The "power struggle" card in chapter 1 does this well but its not a fun mechanic. I can't imagine dealing with a whole chapter of these types of manipulative characters.
Touchstone:Oubliette -
I have put development on hold for a while in order to play more games and finish my storytelling experiments. I have been playing 1st & goal quite a bit lately and I'm very impressed with their system for dealing with team stats. I love that the stats are built into custom dice so you never need to look up anything special on charts. It keeps the stats and rules in the background so the players can focus on the fun part of a 2 player game... reading their opponent!
I have tried some solitaire rules for this games and found that while they work very well, the game lacks any real excitement when played in this way. I have tested solitaire rules for several multiplayer games recently and have found them all lacking. Games designed for MP have very different reward systems then those designed purely for SP (single player or solitaire play). That is what I found with 1st and goal, the pacing of the game is fine for a game about reading your opponents mind BUT in solitaire play you are simply playing the odds and tricking the AI is not satisfying! This has really made me think long and hard about what makes for a satisfying SP game...
Pacing is extremely important in solitaire games. The solitaire games I play the most are ones that can be played in under 20 minutes. Zed Deck and Touchstone:Oubliette are my most played games because they are so quick to setup and play. Also when a game plays at lighting fast speeds there is a sens of tension and immersion that come from making important decisions every second.
Storytelling is the next key element. Most of the solitaire games I play take about an hour to play but end with me having experienced a dramatic and entertaining adventure. In a way they feel like I sat down to watch a TV show yet I was actually the main character. For some reason that length of time is very important... maybe we have been programed to pay attention for just that amount of time by TV. Games like Ranger, Lord of the Rings LCG, Doctor Who storytelling game have always filled my desire for entertainment better that any TV show or computer game.
Recently I discovered an old Star Trek board game that lets you play out the Kobayashi Maru scenario and was amazed at how perfect the storytelling and pacing were. It captured the challenge of the "no win scenario" with the drama of losing crew and ship systems, but more importantly it also felt like Das Boot! It perfectly captured the moments of anticipation you get in old U-boat films and that you also see in the final scenes of The Wrath of Khan by setting the action in a nebula. On top of this the systems had one of the simplest and most creative systems I've ever seen for tracking the movements of ships in 3d space relative to each other in the games tactical display. Its easy to believe that modern designer games are so much better than their predecessors but its not always true.
New Rules to play test -
I did a lot of play testing of Touchstone:Oubliette last week and found that some of the teams are just too hard. A few of the team powers become oppressive to deal with even for a single game. I've decided to add the events I've been talking about for a while as tokens that can be placed on the team cards overwriting the teams power for the rest of the game. This means that the harder teams can be made a little easier by triggering an event.
My other realization is that there is no feeling of loss when you lose characters because the character draw deck is just as likely to give you a star player as a rookie player. I've decided on a simple leveling system where all characters have a rookie and star play side to their cards. When drawn as replacements they start as a rookie and can be upgraded to star player only by scoring the winning point in a game! This gets rid of the need to track experience and gives you some difficult choices to make near the end of each game... Do yo send out your star player who is more likely to win you the game or send in the rookie in the hopes that they can win and thereby level up.
I will start play testing these ideas next month...
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