Game Design Prototype for FABLE TABLE - A customizable creative story building tool aimed at all ages. This game is an attempt to bring back our disconnect with our imagination in the rush of the digital age. The game has multiple multi player formats to adapt to it’s audience.
Before I start this, let me explain that the Invasion project has come a long way since its first inception in October 2013. While the first post (which you can find here) explains a lot of the original creation of the game, this post is going to cover a lot of the changes and fixes that the game went through before its current incarnation.
During the last article, I laid out how the game was going to work, functionally. And then I highlighted some of the early concerns. Since that was the first draft, there was a lot of work to be done. I mocked up some cards and had some friends play test it. Sure enough, there was an obvious lack of player interaction. And during the whole time, no one “failed” to play cards with the die rolling mechanic. This said a few things to me;
The lack of interaction took out a lot of the fun of the game. During the five games that were played, only once did one of the players Raid the others camp. Both players were focused almost solely on the Aliens – which were meant to be a form of annoyance, and not necessarily the primary antagonist. Players won by moving faster than the opponent, and strategically accumulating more Speed.
The difficulty of the cards needed to be increased in order to make the die rolling relevant. The die rolling is supposed to evoke the feeling of stress and desperation. Instead, after the first few cards players didn’t even worry about it.
There were other minor problems that came up, but most of the can be squashed by just cleaning up the rules a little bit. The second problem is something that, for now, is an easy fix. Upping the difficulty of cards will make the die rolling more important, make players feel more desperate and adjust the game to be more balanced. This particular problem will be adjusted a few times before finding the sweet spot. This is something we should remember – because if the sweet spot can’t be found then we have to do something else with it.
The big problem is player interaction. How do we get the players to understand that they’re enemies with one another? The first idea is to increase the pressure on both players. We can do that a few different ways. By changing how the Aliens attack, by changing how players move, etc. We could say that players are attacked by more Aliens if they don’t attack. These all start involving more systems – and involving more systems ends up complicating the game a little bit more.
Another idea is to just weaken the Aliens. The players were more worried about the Aliens than they were about each other. They dedicated Allies, abilities and other cards to dealing with the Alien threat. The easy fix, then, is to decrease the threat of the Aliens and make the players worry more about one another.
That being said the easy fix isn’t always the right fix. But by doing these small changes we can keep a close eye on our problems and see if the fixes work or not.
These quick fixes allowed us to do more analysis when we play tested. Next week, we’ll look at the second round of play testing, and the idea that our game wasn’t the game it was meant to be.
An old work-in-progress that has come to more standstills than I know what to do with was a traditional card game called Invasion. Invasion sees two players sitting across the table from one another as Survivors from an alien invasion. Invasion was originally envisioned as a card game that would attempt to be both cooperate and competitive – my original concept had Organized Play and wide tournaments already planned out for several releases. Needless to say, I’ve been humbled since then.
Let’s begin with a story. Sometime last year (just before GenCon) I had been mulling over themes and genres of card games that were underdone. Fantasy (Magic, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Dungeons and Dragons, Talisman, Descent, etc.) is easily the biggest genre in all of gaming – it’s like a virus. But it’s tried-and-true, and it allows designers a special sort of leeway by saying “It’s magic!” Or “Magic is different in this universe.” And so there’s no real formula for that system.
Science fiction is pretty big, though you could argue and mark this down into sub-groups like futuristic/cyberpunk (like Android, Infiltration, Cyberpunk 2077, countless versions of Star Trek and Android: Netrunner), space-centric (such as Star Trek Catan, X-Wing, Attack Wing, Fleet Captains, Cosmic Encounter, etc.) and fantasy-science (like countless versions Star Wars, Twilight Imperium, etc.) But the number of games that revolve around aliens invading our planet (in modern times) is pretty limited. And the ones that do exist are mostly cooperative board games.
That leaves a pretty open doorway to set a precedent. That’s both incredibly warming to hear and very scary. As a designer, this means I have a lot of freedom – but that isn’t always necessarily good because it means it’s harder to anticipate the needs and desires of my players.
The original concept, before it ever even hit paper, sounded a lot like this; two players were running from alien invaders trying to reach a safe haven. Each player was represented by a team of Survivors, and the cards in their decks were equipment, vehicles or actions that they could find or take. It had a fairly straightforward Resource system that looked similar to Magic: The Gathering’s mana system; Resources were divided into four different groups (Ammunition, Food, Batteries and Gasoline) as were the different cards. This was dropped before I even got to writing things down.
The aliens were represented by a small 10 card Alien deck that consisted of 10 cards chasing after our players. Each turn the top card of the Alien deck would get played – and then all Aliens would shoot at the Survivor with the “slowest” Speed (a trait on the Survivor cards). Players could only advance if there were no active Aliens, or if they could “Escape” or “Hide” from the Aliens (special abilities some Survivors had).
In my head, this sounded like an awesome idea. It filled my heart with joy to have a game like that. I have a soft spot in my heart for alien invasion stories, and I’d just come off from watching the third season of Falling Skies. (If you haven’t watched Falling Skies yet, stop reading this and do it. It’s an excellent show that’s got Steven Spielberg attached to it. It’s The Walking Dead, but with aliens instead of zombies.) While that universe is great, there are some things that I made a point to avoid (the children/leashes, for one) but some things that I wanted to emulate. It was going to be the game I always wanted to play.
The biggest thing I wanted to take away is the feeling of desperation. Always being on the run. Never knowing what will happen to you. It’s part of the same atmosphere that makes The Walking Dead so great.
Before I started actually jotting down the rules, I took a few weeks to watch a few more alien invasion movies and shows (the 2009 remake of V, Independence Day, Signs, Battle: Los Angeles and War of the Worlds, for starters) to parse out what I liked and didn’t like. Then I made a list of all things I wanted from the game and all the things I needed from the game.
If you’re familiar at all with the tournament scene of Legend of the Five Rings, then you’re going to understand the next bit. If not, let me preface by saying it’s a really interesting and unique idea. In tournaments for the game, players not only compete for bragging rights or monetary/product prizes – they compete for the ability to unfold the story in future sets. The winner of certain tournaments would work with the design team to help dictate where the story would go, and therefore what kind of mechanics would show up. This approach is one of the coolest and most memorable things about Legend of the Five Rings – and is something I want to very much copy into Invasion.
Players able to help unravel the story – tell unique tales and adventures of the Survivors trying to reach different safe havens. To survive.
The first iteration of the outline looked like this;
Set Up
1. Deck Building
a. Select a Survivor to lead your journey.
b. Construct a deck of at least 40 cards.
2. Prep
a. Choose a Scenario Invasion deck depending on your Season and venue.
b. Shuffle the chosen Invasion deck.
c. Each player shuffles their own deck.
d. Each player cuts their opponents deck.
e. Each player draws the top 7 cards of their deck.
f. Player with the highest Survivor Speed goes first.
Rules
1. Invasion Phase
a. The active player flips over cards from the Invasion deck (one at a time) until he or she encounters an Alien or flips over as many cards equal to his or her Survivors Speed.
b. The active player resolves any Sabotage cards that were flipped over from the Invasion deck.
2. Preparation Phase
a. The active player draws the top card of their Survivor deck.
b. Many cards have triggers during the Preparation Phase.
3. Main Phase
a. Active player may attempt to play any number of cards in his or her hand.
4. Engagement Phase
a. Each encountered Alien does damage to the slowest Ally you control.
b. Each surviving Ally the active player controls deals damage to an Alien.
c. When a player defeats or passes an Alien that player “scores” that Alien.
d. Once every Ally the active player controls has been given the opportunity to attack, the player may attempt to Escape, making a Challenge for each encountered Alien.
5. End Phase
a. The active player discards cards until he or she has 7 card in their hand.
b. Damage on each Ally clears.
c. The next player takes their turn.
Objects
1. Invasion Cards
a. Alien cards. Aliens have a Health, Attack and Victory Value.
b. Sabotage cards
2. Player Cards
a. Survivor cards. Survivors have Trait values (Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence and Charisma) along with a Speed and Attack value.
b. Ally cards. Allies belong to one of the four Traits and have a difficulty to play. They also have Speed, Attack and Health.
c. Equipment cards. Equipment belong to one of the four Traits and have a difficulty to play. When played they are attached to either an Ally or your Survivor.
d. Actions cards. Actions belong to one of the four Traits and have a difficulty to play. Players read the text, perform those actions and then trash the Action card.
e. Strategy cards. Strategies belong to one of the four Traits, but are free to play. Strategy cards provide long lasting effects and are permanent on the board. Each player may only control one Strategy card at a time.
Terminating Conditions
1. The game ends when the Invasion deck is empty.
2. The game ends when one of the players Survivor cards is destroyed.
3. The game ends when one player has scored 10 or more value of Aliens.
Actions
1. Players decide which cards to play.
a. Whenever a player plays a card they roll 1d10 to attempt to play it. Each card has a type (Strength, Dex, etc.) and a difficulty. The roll plus the Survivor bonus for that Trait must meet or exceed the difficulty of the card.
2. Players decide whether to attack Allies or Aliens.
a. Players decide which Allies to attack.
b. Players decide which Aliens to attack.
3. Players decide which Survivor to use.
4. Players decide which cards to put in their deck.
5. Players decide which targets for their abilities.
Goals
1. To eliminate the enemy Survivor.
2. To score 10 points worth of Aliens.
a. To score more points than your opponent in case of a tie.
This outline has some pretty obvious flaws. And the one thing I was most concerned about was player interaction. In the game both players play against the deck – but for the most part they never interact with one another. On top of that, most of the game felt automated and player choice was really downplayed in comparison with other card games.
The die rolling mechanic is also something that worried me. I wasn’t willing to necessarily give it up, but it added a lot of player frustration in the first few mock ups. Some players would only get to play 1 card a turn, while others might empty their hand. To me, the rolling represents the risk/reward of some equipment and actions – and it really added that flavor of desperation. But it also meant that someone who got “roll screwed” would mentally bow out of the game, or decline a second match – or fold all together.
However, the need for strategy eventually won out – though without entirely abandoning the die rolling concept.
Needless to say, the game has come a long way. And Next week, I’m going to be detailing the evolution of this outline, how it came to be a competitive game and how the game was refined.
After that, we're going to take a look at my current WIP.
