This will be a bit of a text-heavy post, sorry.
Play + Adaptation
Plans of course are famous for their integrity and robustness.
First change very quick off the bat, I had intended to use the old Unreal Tournament achievements - y'know "Wicked Sick" and "Ludicrous Kill" - as the score-tracker for the game. That was about eight or so levels but it was immediately apparent that first to three was about as realistic as could be expected. Why? Well the pace of the game is clearly driven by physical layout and I was overly optimistic about how rapidly players could or would progress around the board. Sometimes that was a matter of not having enough move "points", sometimes because players chose to chase pick-ups instead of opponents, sometimes because the weapons just didn't hit as hard as perhaps they needed to. Fundamentally the players just didn't spend enough time in sight of each other.
I think that might have even been fatal if it wasn't for how amazingly Teleports worked out. I knew they were going to be key to breaking up the map anyway so this was never an actual risk, but they served that purpose of short-circuiting the map and moreover a layer of decision making and strategy that really served players who could see it so much more than those who didn't. One player exploited a move into a 'port, out of another near a weapon pick up, back into the second and out a third to attack an opp at short range with their new shotgun. Brilliant stuff.
Fortunately scoring was something I could change without players noticing. The next problem was brought to my attention by the players, and I mean every single group as well.
What does "Move x3" mean? What does "2x Movement" mean?
Fundamentally it wasn't clear enough on the card what moving meant, and I mixed (or didn't sufficiently disambiguate) doubling vs N instances. With hindsight it's an obvious weakness for any solo game developer. I was too close to see that what I knewI was failing to adequately express in print. You'll have to take my word for it that given my professional career, this is somewhat embarrassing. Fortunately this was a simple thing to handle with a little explanation and never more than a speedbump.
Getting stuck was slightly more than a speedbump though. This happened - either being unable to move or being unable to shoot - to three players out of sixteen on the day, and I knew this was a risk going in hence the existence of the "Wait" cards. Unable to move is definitely the more significant problem as a player is more likely to be able to do anything and their position will deteriorate turn after turn this state continues. I don't know in each situation whether the player in question had simply managed their cards poorly, but even so it's too much punishment. This was one of those GM-steps-in moments - I just ripped a couple cards from their hand and replaced them with a move and a draw so we could continue. Not pretty, but the game could carry on.
Apart from the guys who ran around tooling up instead of hitting each other and game where the girl tabled her opponents - both of which were unintended but simply different experiences, the thing more or less worked as expected. Some things never happened for me to think on (nobody ever got stunned) but it didn't fall over. Woot.
Reflections + Corrections
Range. Simply, I should have approached this as an exception not a rule. Range 10 is equivalent to infinite most of the time anyway, it added nothing but counting time. Range in a future version will be infinite by default and some weapons will be limited down where appropriate.
As I said in the last post, I was unhappy with armour and I still need to deal with this in a cleaner way. And I need a way to make temporary defence work more seamlessly with bunny-hopping. Ignoring next hit maybe, though that seems a bit too powerful. Still needs thought see!
All of the on-the-day issues need corrections. I need to:
- finesse the text on the cards
- do more work to prevent players getting stuck - some sort of hand manipulation or free movement or increasing the density of "Wait" or other split cards
- do something to dial up the aggression - increase the damage on weapons perhaps, increase the average movement distance maybe
- most of all, work out real objectives/scoring for the game, and I'm interested in doing capture-the-flag, survival, bombsite and other such modes beyond simple deathmatch.
Future
Despite all of that....
Over half the people who played the game asked me for the rules/cards which is enormously validating and basically makes the whole thing worthwhile. Such positive feedback from people who don't even know my name means I don't completely suck at this, which gives me licence to continue.
In terms of actually giving those people the game, well I now have this site as a vehicle to do that - with the huge caveat that they'd have to find me, because I honestly never considered the eventuality and didn't leave any contact info for anyone to follow. That has problems though; for one the cards themselves need corrections as per above so I need to do some work there, and for two they'd have to navigate their way around Artscow or some other printer which isn't a great experience nor cheap enough. I am seriously considering whether a very small print run, at-cost Kickstarter using a higher quality printer outfit might be the way to do this and even with the very very small smple size, the feedback seems like maybe there's appetite for this kind of thing out there.
Another consideration is I now need to start planning for Salute 2020 (hoping by grace of SLW I get a table again) and my next best ideas are unlikely to be something I can achieve in a year, but running back this table clearly is (and since it's largely been ignored by Salute vlogs I guess it will still be new to some people). I'm not nearly so keen on running the same game because that seems like a definition of madness, but if it's with a Kickstarter in mind then maybe that's ok.
Pathetically desperate for feedback as always, but on this particular subject especially so.
As a footnote, someone mentioned to me an idea about doing a fantasy version based on spellcasting wizards which seems doable and I have a few ideas around interfering with teleports so it's not completely risk-free (some "Telefrag" special card perhaps) and bootstrapping players who fall behind too much (somewhere between limit breaks and inflating heads). And I am of course open to suggestions.
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